


Burn It Out

by rolledhems



Series: The Rest for the Ravens [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Multi, cisgirl!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:15:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rolledhems/pseuds/rolledhems
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mikey is a witch who gets a nudge from The Goddess herself, Calum is a gancanagh who shamelessly uses his Charms, Luke is a cuddly vampire who’s always too cold, and Ashton is a werewolf who just wishes his ragtag pack of misfit supernatural beings would stop stumbling into magical trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. spark

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my first 5sos fic? I wasn't really like intending to write it, it just sort of happened at like 2 am. It's about half finished at 11,000 words (or that's what I'm thinking) so I'll be posting more when more is edited and finished up. 
> 
> A few notes on the AU: magical realism, essentially, with humans and supernatural beings mixing freely. The "Other Side" is another dimension that magic users (witches, fairies, etc.) can reach. Mikey is a born witch (you can be born with the spark or you can learn to use magic), Calum is a gancanagh which is a sort of fairy with charm and seduction powers, Luke is a vampire devoid of sparkling skin and pretty easily sunburnable, and Ashton is a werewolf with less control towards the full moon but pretty much free reign over when he wolfs out.

See, it’s like this: they never go out on a Friday night intending to get in trouble, you know? It always happens this way, without fail: first, Calum asks why they aren’t doing anything other than lounging around on the shitty old couch in their living room, considering it’s Friday night and they’re all young, relatively speaking. Then, when no one responds to him asking that, he makes his eyes all big and wide at Luke until the vampire can’t ignore them any longer and gives in. And then it’s all over, because Ashton will go wherever Luke and Calum are going, under the pretense of making sure they don’t start a war or something. And Mikey will, of course, be dragged into this as the three of them then start making puppy eyes at her. (She’s been banned from calling them that, though, because Ashton got offended by the insinuation that he’s anything like a puppy. Which, whatever, Ashton. You turn into a fucking wolf all the damn time, you’re at least tangentially related.)

So it’s Friday night, and of course they’re in a huge giant heap of trouble.

Mikey should know better, by now, than to let her three idiotic best friends talk her into bringing them to The Underground, but she’s got problems like poor impulse control and a bad sense of timing and the fact that she never thinks these things through. The Underground is a really sketchy pub, even by witch standards, which are historically very low when it comes to places to drink and do inadvisable magic. There are always a few dingy witches-for-hire that want to rub their creepy fingers on your sleeve edges and ask you if you want your palm read, and there are always dangerous drunken fauns drooling in the alleyway out back. And, of course, there are way too many intoxicated witches with a cruel sense of humor who like to fuck with younglings like her.

The Underground is on The Other Side, which is pretty hard to get to if you’re not a birthright witch like Mikey, so she’s always the designated driver- designated magic user, really. Which means she’s far too sober when midnight rolls around and the deafening music is overtaken by even louder chimes from the cursed grandfather clock behind the bar. She’d been watching Calum and Luke and Ashton make fools of themselves on the dance floor, one or two of them occasionally drifting back to her to beg her to come join them, and sipping some sort of nasty herbal sparkler that’s doing less for her than the grimy fauns leering from the corner. She’s not paying very much attention to her surroundings, too busy keeping track of her boys out on the floor, so it’s a little bit of a startle when a toweringly tall woman sits down at the stool next to her and rests her hand on Mikey’s shoulder. Mikey flinches- she can’t help it, caught off guard, and the woman laughs. She laughs like dried up leaves scuttering across pavement in the darkest days of autumn, sending shivers up Mikey’s spine all the way to her lavender hair.

“Little witchling,” the woman says, leaning closer, and Mikey can’t stop her nervous swallow. “You’ve got a pretty band of bodyguards.”

“Just my friends,” Mikey laughs nervously, shifting on her stool as though that might make the woman’s hand disengage from her shoulder. She looks back at the boys, fervently hoping they’re having some sort of emergency, but they seem to be giggling far to close to one another’s ears in a sweaty huddle on the dance floor. Fuckers.

“So they’re not your summer guard?” the woman asks, her voice getting deeper with amusement. “You look at them like they’re your spellmates, witchling.” Mikey scowls, struggling not to just brush the woman off (a move that’s inadvisable even with witches you know well.)

“I don’t have spellmates, nor a summer guard,” she says steadily, glancing at the woman and then looking away. (Don’t look in a witch’s eyes if you don’t know them, don’t look in a witch’s eyes at all.) It’s kind of funny that the witch is assuming the boys are Mikey’s spellmates, except it’s not really funny at all because ever since the day Mikey found out about spellmates she’s wanted the boys to be hers. Spellmates are unique to birthright witches, one or more magical beings whose innate magic is drawn to the magic of the witch, and whose magic can be bound so tightly to the witch that the witch can actually draw from it. The old legends say that each birthright witch has one spellmate, and each learned witch has one familiar. But it’s not unheard of to have more than one, though it’s pretty much solely for the most powerful witches. Ones who haven’t aged in centuries, who remember the old times.. Mikey’s pretty damn powerful, but she’s not very old, and she’s certainly not the type of ancient powerful that comes with multiple spellmates.

“I think you’re blind to what’s right in front of you,” the woman rasps in her ear, her fingernails briefly pricking Mikey’s shoulder as she grasps her even tighter. “You’re powerful, little witchling, I could taste your magic from across the bar. Don’t be so stubborn about accepting what the Goddess gave you, or you’ll find out what happens to those who spurn her Gifts.”

There’s a bitter taste like copper and coal in Mikey’s mouth as the woman leans back again, and for a moment she can’t breathe. It’s too hot in The Underground all of a sudden, because Mikey’s suddenly deadly seriously sure that the woman next to her is no woman at all. Her pulse is racing, and she’s kind of regretting both the herbal sparkler and the shitload of pizza she ate earlier. She knows she’s not supposed to, but she turns towards the not-woman anyway, and when she meets her gaze Mikey can feel the room slowing, feel the frost squeezing her veins as the not-woman slowly smirks at her.

“I just want my daughters to be happy,” The Goddess says, her teeth sharp like broken glass in her black mouth. “There are great strings for you in the cavern of the Fates,” she tells Mikey, and Mikey can’t even gasp for breath. “And I am an impatient mother, growing restless watching you dance around your summer guard.” Her fingertips trail up the side of Mikey’s neck, fingernails scratching lightly along the tip of her earlobe. “So I’m going to give you a little- push.”

Not for the first time, Mikey wishes she had the wherewithal to refuse her friends when they want to come out- they could be playing video games and eating doritos and she could be somewhere far away from here, where the Goddess wouldn’t be playing matchmaker with her, squeezing the air out of her lungs and probably giving her nightmares for the rest of her unnatural life.

“Until you bind them to your blood,” the Goddess murmurs, leaning in close enough that Mikey goes a little crosseyed trying to focus on her cold, stone eyes, “your blood will not obey, little bird. I’ve put the spark in you, witchling, and it will grow and grow until it consumes you unless you share it with them.” She leans back, finally, and Mikey can draw a breath again. The music filters back in slowly, until the not-woman is no longer pulling the veil around Mikey. She smiles at her, jarringly benevolent and soft seeming in the shadows between the strobe lights from the dance floor. “I’ll be watching, witchling,” she mouths, too quiet for Mikey to rightly hear, but the words are branding on her ears regardless. And then, in the space between one blink and the next, she’s gone.

Mikey stares for a minute, trying to resettle herself, but it doesn’t work- of course it doesn’t work, she’s just been visited by the Goddess and given a fucking ultimatum about binding her three best friends to her soul for eternity. Her herbal sparkler has gone flat in the glass, so she shoves it aside a little too hard, barely catching it before it goes off the bar, and flags down the bartender.

She is way too goddamn sober for this.

\--

It’s near last call when Calum finally slinks his way over to where she’s steadily getting drunker off absinthe and random shots sent to her by the shifty, lumbering wood troll across the bar. He’s reached the final stage of intoxication he always gets into before he actually just leans up against someone and falls asleep on them, and he’s irrepressibly cuddly. Calum slings his warm, tattooed arms over her shoulders, and presses his smooth cheek to her ear, his nose inexplicably cold when it brushes over her cheekbone.

“You should come on the floor with us, Mikey,” he drawls, his breath fluttering her lilac hair and dragging a shiver down her spine. “It’s so lonely without you.” She can hear the pout in his voice, and she’s kind of glad she can’t see it as well or she’d be lost to it. Calum is always so convincing when he’s drunk.

“You’ve got Luke and Ash,” she says, nudging him with her elbow in an attempt to disengage him. He’s latched on thoroughly though, because he doesn’t seem to be letting go even as her elbow grows sharper in his side. “You don’t need me.”

“We always need you,” she thinks she hears Calum say, before a curly head is resting on her shoulder, and cold fingers are poking her in the neck, and the other two boys are right there, all of them up in her space at once. Which she’s less opposed to than normal, really, because of all the absinthe that’s not in her cup anymore.

“We should go home,” Ashton says far too loudly in her ear, his breath sour with alcohol. “And we should play some video games, and maybe eat some popcorn.”

“Popcorn,” Luke murmurs dreamily into the crook of Calum’s neck, which- when did they get that close? She’s probably drunker than she thought if she didn’t notice it happening. She heaves a sigh, fumbling for her wallet and slapping a wad of cash down on the bar, mumbling her old charm for proper change towards it so she doesn’t leave more than she needs to. It’s a lot of work to disassemble the pile of boy that’s been constructed around her, particularly since she’s feeling a little effervescent and a lot overheated, but eventually they’re all more or less standing, and Ashton is more or less leading them in a straight line towards the exit (the one that’s usually surrounded by less weird drunk goblins and bean sidhe.)

Somehow, even though the boys seem hell bent on distracting her, she manages to manhandle them all into the circle of hand holding she needs in order to get them all back to their living room, where Calum and Luke promptly collapse onto the couch in a heap of limbs and black skinny jeans. Ashton wanders towards the kitchen, muttering something about popcorn, and Mikey just kind of stares at them all for a moment, before collapsing into her own seat on the tattered beanbag by the tv set.

They’re strangely endearing when they’re drunk, always have been. Luke’s a rather quiet drunk up until the sixth drink, usually trying to tuck his broad frame up against someone to steal their heat. After the sixth drink, he becomes unusually and a little alarmingly flirty. Calum is a cuddly, loud drunk, using his big eyes and pout to charm his way up against anyone he’s taken a fancy to. He can’t control his volume or keep secrets, and he’s always hell bent on everyone having a good time- Mikey’s been on the receiving end of a cheer up cuddle at a party more than once. Ashton’s a giggling mess when he’s drunk, lighting things on fire for the hell of it and laughing more than strictly necessary at everything everyone says. And he’s always hungry, which means Mikey’s gotten very good at hiding her favorite cereals from him on the weekend.

Mikey is, unfortunately, more often than not, either a nostalgic or maudlin drunk. She rarely ever actually ventures out with the intent to get drunk, considering that one downturned quirk to her lips and Calum will attach himself to her like a limpet- and also considering that for young witches, magic is always particularly unruly when intoxicated. Tonight, she’s finding herself maudlin, which is unfortunate, given the weight of the trouble they’ve found themselves in this Friday night.

“Well, lads,” Ashton says from the doorway, holding a bowl of popcorn and somehow having lost his shirt. “I’d say this was a successful Friday. We’ve not been arrested, we’re not bleeding. No trouble, eh?” Calum and Luke cheer from their tangle on the couch, and Mikey feels her heart skip a few important beats.

“Hoo-ray,” she says weakly. Fuck. Fucking hell.

\--

When she wakes, sprawled out on the living room floor with Luke’s head on her stomach and Calum and Ashton spooned up next to her, her head aches like a bitch and her heart seems to sink down to the vicinity of her feet as the memories of last night come rushing back. Her hair is an absolute mess, lilac obscuring half her field of vision, so she carefully extracts a hand from underneath Luke’s massive shoulder to rake it back until she can see the blue of their living room ceiling. She kind of wants to push Luke’s irritatingly perfect looking sleeping face off her stomach, because his stupid jawline is digging into her hipbone even through the extra softness of her tummy, but then he sighs in his sleep and smacks his lips slightly, and she just kind of melts back into the carpet. Calum and Ashton are ridiculously peaceful next to her too, their hands intertwined, dark-pale-dark up against her shoulder. So it’s just her for some fifteen minutes, stewing in her own panic and feeling fretful while they slumber on without a care in the world around her.

Ashton is the first to wake up, his eyes blinking slowly and sleepily at her from over the curve of Calum’s shoulder, his mouth opening wide on a yawn that has his teeth looking extra predatory when they gleam in the diffuse sunlight peeking through their blinds. He presses his nose to Calum’s skin and breathes deeply before smiling at her, that dazzlingly bright smile that literally no one else she knows can pull off so soon after waking.

“Good morning, muffin mouse,” he rasps at her quietly, his hand flexing in Calum’s. She smiles helplessly at him, feeling the warm press of his skin when he nudges his hand closer to her shoulder. “Been awake long?”

“Just woken up,” Mikey lies, leaning back again to look towards the ceiling as their other two housemates begin to stir. Calum’s awful to wake up, groaning into the ratty carpet and kicking slightly, but Luke is even worse because he always looks so pitifully sleep ragged, blurred around the edges and mussed and blinking his eyes so pathetically and bemusedly at them. “Hello there, Lukey,” she can’t help murmuring at him, dragging her fingers softly through his knotted haystack of blond hair and watching his eyelashes flutter at her grumpily.

“Fuck off,” he mumbles, immediately turning his face into her stomach and mumbling, “Sorry, Mikey,” afterwards. Ashton laughs at him, so cranky yet always so incapable of following through. His cold mouth presses against the small strip of skin that’s been exposed during the night, the space between her plaid shirt and her skinny jeans, and he exhales unnecessarily hard, sending little lightning bolts through her nerve endings. She swallows heavily, her hand going still in Luke’s hair as he rubs his mouth against her skin, nuzzling his face into her soft stomach. She can feel red beginning in her round cheeks, and she has the sudden urge to just shove Luke off, watch him hit his stupid face on the carpet in the space where her stomach used to be.

“You gonna bite her or something?” Calum says grumpily from her other side, and Luke stills, jerking backwards and pushing himself up on his hands, a little paler than normal.

“I-” he stutters, mouth falling open and- “I’m sorry, I should have fed before we went out last night-” and he’s flustered, clearly embarrassed, because he didn’t mean to do that at all- instinct, rather than desire. Which Mikey should know very well, considering witch blood is like catnip for vampires. But it still sends a stab of disappointment through her, just like every time Luke accidentally gets a little too fangy with her and then immediately pulls away, apologies spilling from his unfairly red lips. It makes her angry, it makes her frustrated, it makes her-

The lightbulb in the lamp in the corner suddenly ignites, glowing a vicious red for a brief second before it shatters all over the carpet. And- fuck.

“Mikey?” Ashton says after a moment, unsure and a little wavery.

“Fuck,” she repeats, this time aloud, before pushing herself up, out of the tangle of them. They’re all staring at her, wide eyed, because the last time she lost control of her magic was when they were in high school and a bully trapped Luke in the school bathrooms during class and left him there. “Fuck,” she says again, a third time for good measure, and then she’s waving her hand towards the glass and repairing it without a second thought and practically running the hell out of there, up the stairs to her room.

Fuck.

\--

Everything on her desk is levitating and she’s got her speakers up full blast, blaring Jesus of Suburbia on repeat straight at her face, when there’s a timid knock on her door. Timid knocks are relatively rare in their house, given the length of time they’ve known each other- given how long they’ve lived together. She flicks her eyes towards the speaker, cutting off the music mid-yell, and whoever is on the other side of the door takes it for the cue it is. It creaks open slowly enough that she’s a little annoyed by the hesitance, before Calum’s head pops into view and he smiles warily at her.

“Can I come in?” he asks, voice low and amiable. It should piss her off, how obviously he’s broadcasting his absurd levels of magical Charm at her, but they’re working too effectively for her to get very angry so she just waves him in. He shuts the door behind him, stepping around the levitating pencil holder and the binder full of orders for their little magic shop they run out of a storefront downtown. Calum sprawls himself lengthwise next to her, nudging up close even though she’s got a California King bed (enchanted to fit in her room, of course) and there’s no need for them to be within three feet of each other. His fingers trail down her trembly arm until he can twine them around her wrist, and he slings his ankle over hers, just like they used to lay together on the field after his football practices in high school, watching the clouds above.

They lay like that for a while, just breathing in each other’s company, and the full, sleepy weight of Calum’s Charm eventually wears down the storm building around Mikey, until the levitating objects in the room settle gently back in their place and everything is quiet once more. Calum shifts next to her, rolling a little closer, and presses his lips to her shoulder once, twice, three times.

“You’d tell us if something was wrong, right Mikey?” he says softly, his thumb rubbing over her pulse point. And how unfair of them, really. Fucking cutthroat of them, to send Calum to do their dirty work. They all know that Calum’s known Mikey the longest, that Calum’s Charm is the hardest to resist (by its very nature as the Charm of a gancanagh), that Mikey will always cave to Calum’s coaxing. She sighs heavy and long, closing her eyes, squeezing them so tightly that colors burst behind her eyelids, before she opens them again and lolls her head to the side, meeting his earnest gaze.

“I fucked up,” she says, her voice gravelly with frustration. And she loves Calum so, so much in that moment because all he does is rub his thumb over her pulse again and kiss her shoulder one more time, and murmur-

“We can fix it.”

“I don’t think we can,” Mikey mumbles, closing her eyes again. “It’s not something you can really fix, Cal.”

“Is it a boy problem? A girl problem? Did you get someone pregnant? You owe someone money?” he asks, shaking her ankle with his, the force of his silly smile obvious in his voice.

“It’s a Goddess problem,” she says after a minute, taking a shuddery breath. Calum breathes out as she breathes in, and she can feel the tension even with her eyes closed.

“What sort of Goddess problem?” Calum asks her carefully, his fingers going a little tighter around her wrist.

“The sort of problem where, like-” she opens her eyes, the weight of his gaze overwhelming her, “where, like, she came to me last night at the bar and put the spark in me.” Calum’s jaw drops a little, his eyes narrowing at her. “And she told me who my spellmates are, and if I don’t do what she wants, I’m going to literally lose my goddamn mind.”

It feels like such sweet relief to have it off her chest, even if Calum is staring at her dumbfounded, even if saying it out loud makes it frighteningly real, and they just stare at each other for a long, long moment, before Calum sits up and opens his mouth and yells as loud as he can-

“Ashton! Luke! House meeting, now!”

\--

“So, the Goddess-” Luke starts, his brow furrowed-

“As in, The Goddess-” Ashton interrupts. “The Goddess. The One. The Witchmother. The source of all birthrights.”

“Yes,” Luke says exasperatedly. “The Goddess, yes, that one- that’s the one who came to you last night? And told you, what- that you have to shack up with your spellmate, or you’re doomed?”

Mikey nodded miserably, her head in her hands, staring down at the scarred up wood of their kitchen table, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. Calum’s hand was on her knee, a thumb stroking over her kneecap, clearing trying to Charm her still, but it didn’t seem to be working. She was shaking out of her skin, the black of the tattoos on her pale arm writhing a little under her unease.

“That’s fucked,” Ashton says, frankly, sitting back in his chair. “That’s well fucked, Mikey.”

“Do you know who they are?” Luke asks, his voice a little wavery, and shit, fuck, well-

“Yeah,” Mikey says, nearly inaudibly, raising her eyes a little to look at the three of them.

“We’ve got to go get them, obviously,” Ashton says, glancing at Luke and Calum. He’s got that confident caretaker tone on, the kind he gets when he feels he needs to take care of his little pack, and she really really doesn’t want to tell them the truth, but they’ll know if she’s lying, and the Goddess will know that she’s lied to them, and there’s no doubt in her mind that won’t go well. “Where are they?”

Here goes nothing, she thinks despairingly.

“Right here,” Mikey coughs, rubbing an awkward hand over the back of her neck, sitting up in her chair so she can avoid meeting any of their eyes.

“I’m sorry?” Luke says slowly. “Did you- what?”

“Right here,” she repeats. “In this house. Right here.”

“So it’s one of us,” Ashton says, his eyes wide and his brain clearly struggling to catch up. Which, Mikey doesn’t blame him. This has got to be kind of fucked for them, considering that if she wasn’t well in love with all three of them it would be fucked for her too. It still is fucked for her, because these are her best friends and they don’t want her like that and she’s fucking doomed to an eternity with them because forces beyond her control shacked them up like little pawns on a matchmaking chessboard.

“It’s, uh-” she coughs again, clearing her throat and trying not to fidget right out of her earthly body. “It’s actually, um, all of you?”

“All-” Luke chokes a little. “All of us?”

“Surprise?” Mikey says, doing half-hearted little jazz hands at them. They look real fucking surprised, for sure, and not at her lack of jazz hand ability.

“I thought there was only one spellmate for every birthright?” Calum asks, his voice a little weak.

“Funny thing, um. No? Not if you, like, have a lot of magic. Which I guess I must? Because. Um. You guys?” Mikey stumbles over her words, watching their faces as they struggle through what must be the shock of a damn lifetime. And not a good one, if the way Ashton’s face is contorting is any indication. She feels sick to her stomach, the salt and pepper shakers on the table rattling as she loses a little control, and Calum immediately slaps his hand back on her thigh to try and Charm her down off her ledge. It works, of course, because she’s weak and she’s fucking- she’s so damn easy for them, all three of them.

“I don’t know if we have a bed big enough,” is the next thing Luke says, and it breaks the tension enough that she can stand up without holding on to Calum’s shoulder for control.

“We don’t- um. We don’t need a bed,” she says, the words fumbling out of her mouth like water from a broken dam. “We don’t have to be, like, involved. It’s just a ceremony, just a power binding, and then. Everything can go back to normal.”

“But your spellmate is supposed to be your life partner,” Luke says, audibly upset, probably distressed at the thought that Mikey’s going to have to live her life as some weird celibate monk in the bro-hood of their house, doomed to an existence where platonic cuddles and fist bumps are the substitutes for candlelit dinners and a dozen red roses every month.

“Everything can go back to normal,” Mikey repeats, and then she turns away from them, because it’s getting kind of hard to look at their dumbfounded faces. “I can get the things for the binding by tomorrow night and we can just do it then, and get this over with.”

They don’t say anything as she leaves the room, but she can hear their frantic whispering behind her by the time she reaches the staircase, and it makes her heart feel like it’s flopping like a dying fish in her throat.

Everything can go back to normal, she tells herself one more time, like the third time’s the charm in making her believe it. Because normal is what I want.

She doesn’t bother analyzing how bitter it tastes to lie that blatantly to herself.

 

 


	2. moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is supposed to go back to normal, but nothing does.

The binding ceremony is very simple- Ashton, Calum, and Luke don’t even have to say any incantations. All they have to do is sit very still and very quiet in their chalk circles while she paints a sigil on their foreheads with a paste made of lily of the valley (devotion), apple blossoms (promises), snapdragon (strength), and a vial of each of their blood. It smells like iron and springtime, and it sits heavy in her nose as she finishes the sigils and sits in the fourth circle. She lights the four candles, three black and one white, and closes her eyes.

She can feel the weight of the Goddess between her second and third breaths after closing her eyes, and she knows the boys can feel it too.

“Thrice around the candle bound, sink our roots into the ground,” she says, her voice ringing clear in the veil the Goddess’ presence has wrapped around the four of them. “Spellmates in eternity, Goddess pleased to favor me. Our breath together, we beseech- Goddess, bind us to our peace.”

It’s just like every silly youtube video her teachers had shown in class in highschool, only it’s so much more real because it’s her, and it’s them, and she can feel the Goddess smirking at her through the veil.

“Blessed be,” the voice crackles through the air, that same voice the not-woman at the bar had spoken to her with, those scuttering dried up leaves and that spine-tingling chill of electric magic stinging Mikey’s tongue when she takes a breath. And the veil just suddenly- lifts away. With it goes the cotton softness of the dark room, the candles blowing out, and in the pitch black of their basement she shudders with a new awareness of the other three.

“That’s fucking weird,” Calum’s voice breaks out, a laugh caught on the edge of his words. “I can feel you guys, like, in my chest.”

And so can Mikey- she can feel all of them, feel their magic. When she closes her eyes again, she can practically see the lines pulsing between the four of them, like lightning connecting them. It’s terrifying but amazing all at once, and suddenly all four of them are giggling in the dark like it’s one of their elementary school sleepovers all over again.

“Holy shit,” Ashton says through his laughter. “We fucking did it, Mikey isn’t gonna, like, explode from a curse or some shit now.”

“Excuse you,” Mikey says, false snottiness permeating her tone. “I did all the hard work, you guys just sat there looking pretty.”

“You think we’re pretty,” Luke says, equally snottily, and then they’re all giggling again.

 _Maybe this will be okay_ , Mikey thinks. _Maybe it’ll all be fine._

\--

And for a little while, it is all fine. They go about their days pretty normally. Mikey wakes up half an hour late like clockwork to Ashton banging on her door, yelling about how they need to eat breakfast now or they’re going to be late to open the shop. Calum makes them scrambled eggs, and Ashton makes them toast. Mikey and Luke sit sulkily at the kitchen table until they’re fed up and have had their tea (or warmed blood, in the case of Luke) and the four of them need to pile into the car to go to work. Ashton admonishes Mikey for just using a spell to wash her hair and not actually showering, Calum flutters his eyelashes and his Charm at Ashton until Ashton gets a little dazed and stops bitching at Mikey, and Luke looks out the window with his ridiculous sunglasses on the whole way there, looking extra pale from all the sunscreen he always has to slather on before leaving the house.

They open up the shop at 11 am every morning except for Sundays, when they’re off, and they do a pretty brisk business until 5:30 every evening, except Saturdays, when they close at 3 so that they can all go home and fool around on their instruments in the basement and write songs they’ll probably never perform live instead of on youtube. People come in and ask Mikey for love potions she can’t make them, and people come in and ask Calum for charms he can’t carve them or dates he won’t go on. People come in and ask Ashton for Pack advice he’s actually rather adept at handing out, and people come in solely to ogle Luke, who does all their books and runs their cash register. It’s business as usual.

Except it isn’t, because every time Mikey closes her eyes, from the moment she wakes up until the moment she falls into a restless sleep at night, she sees those burning lines that tie the four of them together. She feels them in her chest, and she knows they feel her. The four of them have gotten even more adept at reading each other’s moods, have gotten more powerful as they draw on one another’s magic in some sort of infinite feedback loop that builds them all up. And the other three keep giving her these looks, like they’re still thinking about Luke’s comment when they first found out. Like they’re pitying her, for being tied down to them. Like they regret it, because they can’t give her the romantic love a spellmate is supposed to give. Mikey mostly avoids thinking about the looks, because it gives her heartburn to think about how much she wants to kiss them and how much they don’t want to kiss her back. Plus, now they can tell when she’s feeling emotionally constipated and fretful, and they always get up in her space to try and cheer her up if she dwells on it too long.

But they can handle this, and they do, until it’s two weeks later and the full moon is fast approaching them. Which wouldn’t usually be a problem for three out of four of them, considering Ashton is the only one with a real compulsion tied to the moon, but now that they’re all bound together, it seems the pull of the full moon is determined to wreak havoc on them as a group. With seven days to go to the actual full moon, the jitters aren’t too bad. Mikey doesn’t even notice the energy until they’re all four sitting on the couch watching some terrible horror film that is so far from scary it’s actually become somewhat of a comedy. Luke has sprawled his long legs out along the couch, with Ashton sitting just shy of his feet and Calum and Mikey managing to wedge themselves in between Luke’s legs so their knees are hooked over the curve of one and their backs are resting against the other. It’s a pretty normal position, Calum’s arm resting along Mikey’s back and her cheek resting on his shoulder. But then she realizes that her fingertips are spitting little green sparks. Calum’s thumb presses against her ribs briefly, the soothing warmth of his Charm diffusing through her skin, but it doesn’t stop the sparks. In fact, it only makes them spit farther, burn brighter.

“Mikey?” Luke asks, his eyes doing that slightly unsettling moonstone vampire glow thing they always seem to do as they turn towards her, reflecting the light of the television. “You ok?” She nods, snapping her fingers together, shaking a few more sparks out, and they calm. It’s not totally unusual for her to be spitting sparks when she’s in contact with all four of them now, as their own personal ley lines connect and the power wells up in her sternum.

But a few minutes later, orange sparks are spitting from the ends of her hair (violet, this week) and Ashton is looking increasingly more concerned, his knee jiggling and his foot bouncing as he bites the edge of his lip and glances between her and the television. She’s muttering angrily at her hair, trying to comb out the sparks, when he finally blurts it out.

“Ithinkit’smyfault,” he says in a rush, tripping over his words. “I think it’s, uh. I think it’s because of the moon.” She looks at him for a moment, considering, and, yeah. Well. Duh. Why didn’t she think of that? Why didn’t they think of that all together?

“Oh.” Mikey says. “You- ok. Yeah. Moon. Overflow of magic.”

“Is this seriously what it feels like for you, Ash?” Calum asks over the top of her head, where the sparks have turned pink and smell a little like strawberries. “Because no wonder you always need the Charm so badly by the end of the week. I feel like we’re all gonna suddenly go super sonic or something.”

“It’s a little uncomfortable,” Luke admits quietly from the other side of Calum, and Ashton looks ashamed, glancing away from them and biting his lip again. She can feel his upset building, the fact that he thinks this is his fault, and so she reaches out to grasp his wrist in gentle fingers, squeezing lightly.

“How do you usually deal with it, Ashy?” she asks, as softly as she can with little blue sparks zinging down her tongue, smelling of freesias and ozone. She’s like a damn fireworks show now that all of them are focusing in so intently on the insistent tugging of the moon. Ashton starts to turn pink, then red, his cheeks practically glowing in the darkness, before Calum starts laughing hysterically and- ok, so she’s pretty confused. Ashton clears his throat awkwardly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“I, uh. I usually have to, um. Get it out? Like, exhaust it?” he says, words stilted. Calum curls in even closer to her, reaching out to run a knuckle along Ashton’s collarbone.

“He usually fucks it out, don’t you, Ash?” Calum says, his voice dipping low and sultry, the tail end of his giggles dying out because it’s suddenly stiflingly hot in the room and, ok, were they all touching this much when the movie started?

“Ok,” Mikey says, after a long, tense moment. “Well, um. Maybe we should, like. Calum and Luke and I can go out for pizza, or something, and you can, um. Call someone? Or, like, you can go out and we’ll stay in and try not to, like, eavesdrop through the bond?” Ashton probably cannot, at this point, get more red without bursting blood vessels, and they’re all four of them shifting very uncomfortably on the couch as the movie drones on, forgotten. Because their discomfort is a tangled mass between them in the bond, and it’s hard to pick out whether it’s discomfort because this is a line they don’t want to cross, or because of the moon, or because maybe there’s a little voice in the back of Mikey’s head that says “I’ll fuck the moon-high out of you, Ash.” She feels a little dizzy just thinking about it, feels like she needs to get out of there, so she goes to stand up- but Calum’s hand wraps around her shoulder, and she can’t move without really wrestling out of his grip.

“Yeah, I’ll just, um. I’m just gonna go to bed, if that’s okay,” Ashton finally says, getting up and pointedly not looking at any of them as he leaves the room. Mikey pointedly does not think about the fact that she can pretty much tell Calum’s gotten half hard in his sweats, and she pointedly does not look at Luke’s lap, and she also very, very pointedly tries not to see the fact that Ashton’s having a little trouble walking as he makes his way up the stairs to his room.

“We’re all gonna have blue balls by the end of this month,” Calum mutters under his breath.

Luke turns up the volume on the television.

They all try not to think about the burst of sunshine-tasting magic that skitters through their veins about ten minutes later, or the satisfied groan they can all hear echoing in their brains, and they definitely try to ignore the pink-hot-sweet feeling that diffuses through their stomachs.

Maybe they don’t have a handle on it after all.

\--

The next morning is, predictably, a little awkward. It’s a Tuesday, only the second day of the full moon week, and their morning starts out fairly routine. But Ashton can’t look any of them in the eye, and Luke is extra cranky, a little storm cloud hanging above his head as he stumbles to his seat at the kitchen table, dropping his cheek to rest on the cool wood and grumbling under his breath. Calum sets his glass of warmed blood in front of him and leans down to kiss him on the forehead, fingertips brushing a little Charm along the line of his cheek, but it doesn’t seem to help. He’s in a sulky mood, and it’s probably because the jitters have gotten even worse. Mikey drops her toast three times before she manages to pick it up and actually take a bite out of it, because the bond with Ashton is making her heart beat erratically and her fingers shake. There aren’t any sparks yet, which is good, because she really doesn’t need to set anything on fire this morning. They’re halfway through breakfast when Luke finally raises his head up to look at them with baleful eyes and fangs extended slightly farther than normal.

“It’s making me feel like I need a fresh feed,” he says, his morning voice rasping all gravelly over Mikey’s nerves. “I should- I’m going to need a fresh feed from someone before we go to work or I’m going to be all fanged out all day.” Ashton looks so guilty it actually hurts a little, but Calum reaches over and presses his hand to Ashton’s thigh before the guilt can settle too deeply.

“It’s not your fault, Ash,” Calum says patiently, his coaxing voice on full force, his Charm turned way up to eleven. “We don’t mind, we love you.” and while Calum is busy reminding Ashton not to be guilty about being himself, Luke has turned himself towards Mikey and he’s watching her with those hungry, luminescent eyes that she can never seem to shake out of her dreams. He doesn’t say anything, but she knows- she knows what he wants.

Luke hasn’t really fed from her that many times, considering how long they’ve known each other. Vampires don’t need a fresh feed every day, or even every week. They can subsist plenty well on donated blood, rewarmed for them once a day, and they can even eat real regular people food if they want to, though it doesn’t do much for them. It’s only a couple times a year, or after a great exertion or particularly taxing spell they’ve participated in, that they need a fresh feed. Given all the spells she uses Luke for at the shop, he needs to have a fresh feed pretty regularly, maybe once every six weeks. But he hardly ever feeds from her, because Calum’s always hooking his arm around Luke and dragging him off, or Ashton’s ruffling his hair and leading him over to the couch before she can even offer. In all the years she’s known Luke, he’s maybe fed from her four or five times.

It makes the most sense to want to feed from her, out of all of them- witch blood is the most potent of all. Gancanagh blood is fiercely sweet, from what Luke has told them, and werewolf blood is the richest with iron, but witch blood outstrips them and all the other kinds combined. It’s got magic down to the DNA, and though Luke has never told her what it tastes like, she’s seen enough vampires blissed out on witch blood at The Underground to know that it’s more than just a sweet treat or a hearty meal. Witch blood is basically a drug, and if what she’s seen is any indication, it’s a potent and incredibly enjoyable one.  

Calum and Ashton have finished talking, and it’s when Calum’s fingers touch her own that she realizes she and Luke have been staring at each other for a few moments longer than is probably normal.

“Lukey?” Calum asks, his voice lilting and playful. “You want some of me before we go?”

“No,” Mikey says, surprising even herself, forcing herself not to shrink back at all when all three of them level their gazes at her. “It’s, uh. He can feed from me.” Ashton and Calum look a little taken aback at that, and Luke just swallows heavily, his pupils blowing out wide and black and hollow.

“You sure, Mikey?” Ashton reaches over, tapping her wrist gently with his calloused fingertips.

“Yeah,” she says, more confident now. More confident in the fact that the look Luke was giving her did mean he wanted to feed from her. “You guys always do it, it’s my turn.” She stands up, pushing her short violet hair behind her ear and making a show of smoothing out the wrinkles in her ratty band tee shirt and skinny jeans as she makes her way around the table to Luke. “You think you can handle this, Lucas?”

It should probably scare her, the smirk that slowly steals over Luke’s lips, but it doesn’t. It sends her heart beating faster, and her breath is a little unsteady, but she doesn’t back down. And Luke doesn’t usually use his quick speed, or his unfair amount of strength, so it’s a little startling when he reaches out with his cold, long fingers and grabs her by the waist, dragging her down onto his legs. It’s ridiculous how big he seems from this vantage point, looking down at her even with her sitting on his lap, his broad shoulders dwarfing her, his fingers reaching farther than is fair around her waist. He reaches up to brush her hair aside, leaning down a little towards her neck, and it feels like something is about to shatter into a million pieces right here in the kitchen. Maybe it’ll be her, fuck.

He presses a gentle kiss to her neck, his lip ring cold against her skin, before he’s opening his mouth and biting down so delicately she almost wants to make fun of him. But it’s not her that makes an obscene sound when his fangs bottom out and he starts to suck, pulling the blood from her. It’s Ashton. She can almost feel his surprise that the sound escaped him at all, but then she’s burning up from the inside out, and fuck, she forgot how damn good it feels to have Luke feed. She knows her fingers are digging into his shoulders and she knows she’s gonna regret how tightly her knees are pressed against his thighs.

It shouldn’t feel so good to have someone suck your blood, but that’s part of the magic of it- it feels like foreplay, Luke’s fingers gently rubbing against her back and his mouth pulling at her throat and shit, fuck, she’s definitely getting wet. He can probably smell it, this close to her. Calum can definitely smell it, because he lets out this darkly amused laugh, and damn his stupid magic and damn his stupid Charm and damn his stupid abilities, damn them all. She lets out a shuddery breath, her hips jerking a little involuntarily as she goes a bit dizzy, and then Luke’s making a desperate sound against her throat before he pulls back, pressing a gentle kiss to the bite marks to force them to close up. She’s gonna have a purple bruise there, blooming like an orchid around the punctures, but she doesn’t even care. Because she’s sitting in Luke’s lap and he’s looking at her like she’s the world, with flushed cheeks and a wet mouth and dazed eyes.

“You taste so good,” Luke slurs out, his voice drugged and sluggish. Shit, that- she wants him to tell her that with his head between her thighs, she wants to watch Calum lick the taste of her from those red lips, she wants- ok. She needs to get out of his lap because her clit is fucking throbbing and she can feel Calum’s intense stare like a brand between her shoulderblades and she can hear Ashton’s unsteady breathing.

“You sound like a lush,” she says, her voice only half-heartedly making its way towards joking, and she’s so unsteady when she tries to stand up that it’s a miracle she doesn’t fall. Luke won’t let go of her waist, so she surreptitiously peels his hands off one finger at a time. He’s still staring at her with those blown out pupils and that dopey grin when she steps away.

“What a lightweight,” Calum says, his voice cracking a little bit. “That was way less than you drink from me or Ash and you’re already smashed, Lukey.”

“What can I say,” Mikey tries to joke, “I’m just that good.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees, his voice far too sincere.

She doesn’t even sit back down to finish her breakfast, throwing it in the trash and making her quick escape to clean up her underwear and determinedly not rub one out because they’ll all know.

This is a fucking disaster, she thinks.

And it only gets worse from there.

\--

By sundown, they’re all on the verge of cracking, so they pick up chinese food on the way home and don’t even bother pretending to cook. It’s a tense, silent dinner, the lines between them blurring and jumping and crackling. Mikey makes a strategic retreat to her room after dinner, leaving a trail of levitating things behind her until she slams her door shut, at which point they all drop to the ground and everything in her room picks up.

She can hear the boys trying to be their normal selves downstairs, but it clearly isn’t working, because one by one they all retreat to their rooms until the house is dead quiet and buzzing with the tension between them all.

Of course it’s Ashton who tries to make the peace, because he’s still feeling guilty about all of this, so at nearly midnight he quietly slips through her door and dodges the floating books and other things so he can slide into bed next to her. Unlike Calum, though, he doesn’t make his way all the way across the bed to cuddle up against her side. He gives her space, which right now she really appreciates because they’re all having some sort of weird four way moon related boner and touching people platonically is really not what she wants. They don’t even talk for a good half an hour, just laying there breathing slowly and evenly, the connection between them levelling out. Ashton is humming something soothing, probably some sort of lullaby. He seems to know a lot of them, from taking care of his siblings when he was younger.

“I had a dream,” he says after a while, his voice all nasally from lying down flat on his back. “I had a dream you all Changed with me on the full moon.”

“You don’t think we really will, do you?” Mikey asks him, turning her head to look at his profile, illuminated by the nearly full moon streaming through her window.

“No,” Ashton replies, turning his head to look back at her. “But I almost wish you would, just so we could run together. I think it’s going to feel weird running without you, now that we’re-” he gestures, big and expansive, and she understands. That’s what it feels like, this all-encompassing connection they’ve entered into.

“We’ll come out to the woods with you,” she says, breathing out slowly and closing her eyes. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and she starts to drift off to sleep with his warmth beside her. Just before she really slips under, she can feel him take her hand in his, those long fingers folding over her soft, pale, short ones.

“I think I’d like that,” he says softly, and she just hums happily in response.

She thinks she hears him say something else, something like “I love you.” But she’s already too far into the blackness behind her eyelids to remember it in the morning.

\--

Wednesday dawns with a jealous Calum and Luke peering through her bedroom door at her and Ashton where they lay, their hands still intertwined, side by side on her big old bed.

“I don’t think it’s very fair to have one on one cuddle time,” Calum says snippily from the doorway, and she uses her magic to fling a dirty pair of underwear at his face, rolling over against Ashton’s side and groaning. Calum, of course, being Calum, catches the underwear and gives it a theatrical sniff, leering at the two of them until Mikey turns bright red and has to hide her face.

“Leave us be,” Ashton says blearily, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “Make us breakfast, or something that’s not right here right now being loud where I’m trying to sleep.”

“You’ve corrupted him, Mikey,” Luke says disapprovingly, before he and Calum disappear to tromp loudly downstairs to the kitchen, and Mikey just stifles a giggle against Ashton’s collarbone.

“I don’t know why anyone thinks I’m the responsible one to be corrupted,” Ashton muses, his fingers threading through Mikey’s hair. “I’m the oldest, shouldn’t I be the corrupting force?”

“You’re the only one of us who owns an alarm clock,” Mikey points out. “And you wear a watch. Ashton, you’re a werewolf who wears a watch.”

“Luke has a watch!” Ashton protests, laughing into the crown of her head as she pokes his ribs.

“A _spongebob_ watch.”

“Stop being cute and cuddly without me.” Calum yells up the stairs, his voice betraying that he’s probably actually really a little jealous of their morning cuddle, so they manage to disengage from each other and actually get out of bed.

This time, nobody has any blood related drug trips or near orgasms at the breakfast table, so they make it to work without incident.

\--

Wednesday seems to have been the calm before the storm, though, because Thursday brings with it a concerning amount of Calum turning up every time Mikey turns around. Any time any of them turn around, really. Every single time Mikey has turned around today, Calum’s been there twirling her hair or leaning concerningly over her with darker eyes than she’s used to him having. She’s caught him pinning Ashton up against every flat surface in their shop, all under the pretense of cuddles. Luke falls victim to Calum’s octopus cling every time she and Ashton are helping a customer out, because he’s always sitting at his stool by the register. She’s in the middle of customizing a necklace vial with a clear mind charm for one of the local college students when she hears Luke make a surprised grunt and turns around to find Calum has actually just straight up stuck his hand down the front of Luke’s pants.

“Please, _please_ do not do that, Calum,” she has to yell shrilly over her shoulder, quickly spinning around to finish the charm and get this kid the hell out of their store because Calum has _lost his damn mind_.

When she finally gets the college student out of their shop she turns the door sign to Closed and turns to the register to find that Calum really, _really_ _hasn’t_ stopped doing that. Luke’s eyes are scrunched shut and his hands are gripping the counter and his head is lolled back against Calum’s shoulder. And Calum- Calum is looking at her with a smirk on his face, his chin hooked over Luke’s shoulder, and his hand flexing obviously beneath the black denim of Luke’s jeans. His eyes are a concerning shimmery gold color, his Charm oozing from beneath his skin, and she can smell the heady perfume of his magic, spice and sex and sugar. Luke shudders minutely, his knuckles whitening as his grip tightens, and it takes Ashton dropping something in the back room with a loud bang to startle them out of the moment. Calum withdraws his hand from Luke’s jeans and presses a possessive kiss to Luke’s pulse point before he’s turning and whirling into the back room to help Ashton, and Luke just sways there for a moment more before his eyes slowly open. His fangs are down halfway, she can see them from the door, and his jeans look painfully tight on his obvious erection.

“I’m gonna- I’m gonna help Ashton too,” she says quickly, and she leaves Luke alone in the front with his boner and the tail end of Calum’s Charm haze.

_They are probably not gonna make it the full moon alive, at this rate._


	3. crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They do an even worse job of resisting the pull than normal, and everything finally crashes together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got... so out of hand. so, so, so out of hand. wow. things get heated in this chapter which somehow manages to be twice as long as I meant it to be.

Everyone does a great job of acting like nothing has happened, although they close the shop early (saying that it’s all because Ashton dropped that crate, even though nothing was broken). They do a great job of pretending everything is fine all through dinner and through dessert, which is binge eating girl scout cookies stuffed in the back of their freezer and then regretting it twenty minutes later when they all have bellyaches while they’re watching Anchorman in the front room. It’s tense as hell in the living room, even though they know every line by heart to this stupid movie, and it should be no problem to relax into the familiar routine of watching it.

 _It’s probably tense as hell_ , Mikey thinks, _because even though we’re supposed to be platonic life partners, we all apparently can’t stop thinking about or touching each other’s boners._

Which is a far cry from how Mikey had anticipated this going, since she was really psyched up for a lifetime of getting off alone and being the only sexually frustrated one in the group because of her really dumb giant endless love for her best friends who definitely didn’t want her like that. It’s just that their constant boners and the way they keep looking at her is kind of making her feel like even though they might not want to, like, _romance_ her- they could be into some gratuitous mutual sexing.

They make it through Anchorman and then they all go to bed in silence. This time, no one sneaks into Mikey’s room, which is good because she’s currently so horny she’s basically unconsciously humping her mattress every time she starts thinking about Calum and Luke in the shop earlier.

And she thinks it’s kind of just her, but then she starts to feel this suspicious sunshiney magic threading through her fingertips, just like the last time Ashton totally jerked off and denied it on Monday night. And then comes this feeling like sugar rushing through her veins, twisting some knot tight in her stomach. And then- then comes this dark and acidic and addictive taste. She closes her eyes, and she can see the magic swelling- it’s coming from her lines. Jesus christ, they’re all jerking off, and she can see it happening. Well, not really. She can’t actually see it, but she can see the magic responding to it, and she can feel the pleasure. It’s kind of paralyzing, getting hit with all this magic at once, and she can feel it thrumming through her. She’s really fucking wet with it, all of it knotting up in her stomach, her clit pretty much aching and her hips shifting on the mattress restlessly. She doesn’t want to give in, because it feels kind of embarrassing and obvious to. But then she doesn’t really have a choice, because the magic swells all at once and her muscles lock, and jesus mother of christ she’s actually fucking coming untouched, crying out too loudly and feeling the hot gush of slick between her legs as she clenches, spasms, gasps for breath. She comes so hard it aches, the magic racing through her and wrecking her, wrenching her open, and when she finally catches her breath the other lines have settled down.

Everything is silent- the other three, the street outside, the magic itself.

“What the _fuck_?” she says, out loud, her voice all raspy and broken up.

But no one answers.

\--

If yesterday was tense as hell, Friday morning brings with it a veritable Cold War of tension. Nothing says uncomfortable like four people getting off magically with one another even though they didn’t mean to and then having to do a walk of shame all together to the kitchen they share. Calum is twitchy, Ashton is subdued, and Luke is new, hellish levels of stilted. It’s worse than the few times they’ve made him say the intro for their youtube videos, his voice coming out terrible and awkward when he’s reading off a script. It sounds like he’s speaking from a note card when he asks Mikey to pass him a napkin. The drive to the shop is silent, no one even bothering to turn on the radio, and the work itself is silent too.

After work, Mikey can’t take it anymore- it’s terrible, trying to breathe with the air all thick from wayward magic and three boys trying to hide their inconvenient boners all day long. It’s been building and building between them, so she doesn’t even bother following the boys into the house when they get home, muttering some shitty excuse about needing to check on the fae rings in the forest. Which is, considering, a shittier excuse than many because that’s actually Calum’s job as the resident member of a sidhe court. None of them try to follow her or yell after her, though, and she’s grateful they can tell that she just really needs a little time in the quiet shadows of the woods.

The trees are nearly as silent as the air had been in the shop all day, but it’s a different type of silence. Mikey can feel the damp air press in on her like an embrace, mossy trunks beckoning on all sides. She checks the first few rings without incident, mushrooms lying undisturbed and unsettling laughter echoing in her ears. It’s not real, just echoes coming through the veils that lie in the fae circles. It sends little shivers up her spine every time, though. Sometimes it slips from the forefront of her mind, exactly how dangerous the fae are. She lives with the biggest dopiest puppy of a fae one can find, so maybe it’s not surprising that she forgets it momentarily from time to time.

The last circle isn’t lying so undisturbed, though. The mushrooms have been trod on, and though the prints don’t look human (or humanoid), the clearing is still rife with unsettled magic. The prints look more like deer hooves than anything else, so it’s likely that a doe wandered unsuspectingly through the veil and got trapped on the other side. Regardless of what happened, the circle’s gravity is spinning wildly and out of control with stray magic set loose, so Mikey settles down to sit in the grass and dig her fingers in the dirt. It’s not been particularly often lately that she messes with fae magic, because that’s usually Calum’s forte. But she’s not unfamiliar with it, and centering circles isn’t that difficult for any experienced magic user. She’s done it quite a few times before, when Calum’s been tired or gone away to the court for something.

It seems like it’s going to be simple when she first reaches out with her magic, connecting to the silver strands winding out from the circle. They twine around her, opening up for her so easily, and she starts to weave them back together into the sphere they’re meant to be. But then it gets out of control, just like everything seems to these days. She hasn’t tried to do any fae magic since the binding spell with the boys- maybe that was a mistake. It seems the circle recognizes the spark of Calum’s magic in her, and suddenly it starts to react. It latches on to that golden flicker in her chest and begins to pull at it, until she’s certain she’s going to be torn in two. It’s terrifying, as sure as she is that the circle can’t actually separate Calum and her from the bond, and she just- can’t seem to stop the connection. It’s paralyzing her, turning her to stone sitting on the forest floor by the smashed mushrooms. The sphere is gyrating wildly, spinning way out of control, and she knows the boys must be feeling this too because suddenly Ashton and Luke’s sparks are swelling beside Calum’s struggling one.

She can’t draw a breath, her lungs seizing far worse than they had been just trying to deal with the tension between her and the boys at the shop. The light of the sphere is getting brighter the more she fights it, the more she tries to wrap her magic around the piercing roots dragging at Calum. Her fingers clench so hard they rip the grass they’ve been buried beneath, her shoulders hunching forward, little spots forming in her field of vision.

This got out of hand, she thinks dazedly, before there’s a snarling sound next to her and cold hands on her jaw and three silhouettes blocking out the jagged silver of the sphere. Calum’s fingers are so gentle as they reach out to press against her collarbone, golden veins spreading out thickly, reaching inside her, turning her inside out and setting her afire as they rip the silver out of her magic and unfreeze her lungs. The sphere resists- of course it does, trying to wrap around Calum now that he’s actually here, but he just drops gracefully down in front of her and plunges his own hands into the ground, wrapping the silver up neatly. It’s the work of less than a minute, then, for him to finish the job she started and get the circle stable again. By the time he finishes, she’s just trying to breathe, panting against Luke’s strong shoulder with Ashton behind her, propping her up.

Her hands feel raw, muddy and tingling from scraping against pebbles, and her muscles ache a little from clenching her fists so hard. She closes her eyes against the soft fabric of Luke’s sweater, hands grasping emptily, and just shudders helplessly for a moment. There’s a hollow feeling in her chest, like the circle had poked holes through her ribs and they weren’t closing fast enough. It’s unnerving. Calum has gotten up to check the circle now, scuffing his toes around the spaces where the mashed mushrooms are to inspect the hoofprints she’d noticed earlier. And no one is speaking, not for a few long minutes.

“What the _hell_?” Ashton says, finally breaking the silence, and she can’t help it- she laughs, rasping and painful, and shoves herself up into a sitting position again.

“Fucking fairies, man,” she says, narrowing her eyes playfully at Calum as he walks back across the clearing towards them. He’s not very amused, though.

“You can’t just fuck around with fae magic anymore, Mikey,” he says, his voice tight. “It’s greedy and it wants anything it thinks it can have, which includes you now that you’ve got my spark in you.”

“Let’s just not fuck around with _any_ magic, shall we?” Ashton interjects, getting to his knees and dusting his hands off, pressing them to her shoulders comfortingly.

“I mean it,” Calum says, bending down to wrap his fingers around her wrists, his eyes sparking golden when she looks up and meets his gaze. His brow is furrowed, hair mussed a little from the speed they probably employed to get to her, and she cracks up a little inside at the intensity of his expression.

“I- yeah. I think I get it now.” She says quietly, and the ice in his gaze melts a little, tipping forward to tap his forehead against hers. He leans back after a moment, glancing at Ashton just long enough for them to establish that they’re not going to let her get up on her own. The world tilts a little alarmingly with the way Ashton picks her up, settling her on Calum’s back like they’re thirteen and having piggyback races again out in the school fields. She’d protest, but it really did scare her having the circle react that way, so instead she just shoves her face against the crook of Calum’s neck and lets him hook his hands under her knees to carry her home.

It’s nearly dark by the time they get back to their house, climbing up the back porch to the kitchen, Ashton flicking the lights on one by one as Calum carries her past the dining room, up the stairs. He sets her down on her bathroom counter, Luke and Ashton retreating back downstairs to finish making the dinner that got interrupted by her mishap. He doesn’t say anything at first, just rummaging around in the cabinets for some peroxide and cotton swabs.

“We felt it when you first reached out to the circle,” he says, finally, turning back to her and reaching for her hands. She holds out the right one first. “And I didn’t think anything of it, because you’ve done that before and you’re so capable, Mikey, you’re so powerful.” His fingers grasp her hand so gently, tilting it up so he can wash the dirt off and disinfect the little scrapes. It stings like a bitch, drawing hisses out from her clenched teeth.

“It was gonna be so quick,” she mutters a little bitterly, pointing to the batman band aid when Calum holds up two choices. He snorts, ripping the package open, and placing it carefully over a particularly nasty gash on the back of her wrist.

“We have no real idea how this binding affected our magic,” Calum murmurs, bending down to buss a sweet kiss over the band aid, leaving tingles behind on Mikey’s pale skin. “We know that we feel Ash’s moon-pull, and now we know that fae magic gets handsy because of my spark, but we don’t really know much else, do we?” And it’s unsettling, him being this serious, so Mikey can tell that he was really scared when he felt the circle start to pull Mikey apart too.

“I don’t know how to find out anything else, though,” she says honestly, leaning back against the mirror to watch him fix up her left hand. His grip tightens momentarily, before he leans back too, looking down at her with an inscrutable look in his eyes.

“You know, Ash always told us that he knew hanging around with us would bring him nothing but trouble,” Calum smirks, and Mikey can’t help but burst out laughing. Calum starts to giggle too, until they’re leaning up against each other laughing a tad hysterically. He wipes his eyes and leans forward to kiss her forehead, breathing out another laugh over her temple and grabbing another batman band aid for her left thumb.

“We’ll figure it out,” Mikey says confidently, watching Calum place another gentle kiss on the second bandaid.

“We always do.”

\--

Everyone treats her like porcelain that evening, which drives her absolutely mad, but she also can’t bring herself to blame them. She’d nearly gotten trapped by a parasitic fae circle, just because she couldn’t stand to deal with some UST. Things haven’t calmed between them all, but she doesn’t mind the thick tension as much as she minded having her breath literally sucked out of her by malevolent magic.

Luke and Ashton have made her curry and brought out her favorite poppadoms, which shows her just how much they were worried about her wandering off even without the whole magic debacle. She takes full advantage of that, stealing the last poppadom off the plate and not apologizing for the pouty look Calum gets. Luke suggests a few games of FIFA after dinner, but they end up playing Portal 2 Co-op with Calum and Ashton sitting on either side of them yelling suggestions that, more often than not, turn out to be entirely unhelpful. It’s really quite nice, Ashton’s legs sprawled over hers and Calum’s hands reaching over to poke at Luke’s controller every once in a while. Kind of like before, if she ignored the crackling energy webbing between them every time she blinked.

They work in sync now even better than they had before, so it’s actually not that hard for them to blast through a few levels of testing rooms. It’s a little like having some sort of video game super power.

“We could probably be a sick gaming team now,” she says, in the middle of leaping her way to the elevators at the end of a level. “They wouldn’t even suspect, hey?”

“You guys never get to team up for Mario Kart again, you know that, right?” Ashton says, his teeth gleaming in the light from the tv as he grins at them from beneath his mussed up curls. “Calum and I already can’t keep up with you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Calum snorts. “I’m not the one who can’t dodge a banana to save his life.”

“Hey!” Ashton protests, but Mikey just lays a hand on his thigh and pats it consolingly.

“You’re the worst, accept it,” she says, not even looking away from the tv screen. Which is why she doesn’t notice that Ashton’s sat up and moved until it happens, until he’s tackled her backwards so that her head is in Calum’s lap and her back is draped across Luke’s thighs. The room is spinning a little, Ashton’s hair hanging down around his face right above hers, and all she can do is breathe out a shocked gasp.

“Take it back,” Ashton says, grinning mischievously at her, his long fingers grasping at her hip. She can feel Luke laughing a little, his stomach jumping against her arm, and Calum’s just watching them with dark eyes.

“I won’t lie to you just to make you feel better,” she snipes, reaching up to push at Ashton’s shoulders. It doesn’t work, because Ashton’s a lot of solid werewolf when he’s determined. He just laughs at her, his silly giggle reverberating through the two of them, before his hands are sneaking down to poke at her vulnerable stomach. It’s like he’s forgotten they’re all over the other two, or maybe it’s more like it just doesn’t matter, because he just goes for it, tickling her mercilessly. It’s instinct to try and jackknife up, her fingernails digging into his shoulders as she shrieks. But she can’t move, his legs pinning her down, his hands skittering over her hipbones and sending overwhelming nerve-y tingles through her. She knows tears are probably streaming from her eyes now, her lungs hurting a little as she gasps for breath, and she digs her nails in a little too hard because Ashton yelps and Luke is grabbing her wrists to pull them back. That’s even worse, her ribs left vulnerable to Ashton’s attack.

She’s red faced and wheezing when her legs finally slip free of Ashton’s, knees coming up to bracket Ashton’s as she squeezes, trying to shove him off the couch and onto the floor. It doesn’t work exactly like that- more like it brings his hips solidly down into the cradle of her own and she can suddenly feel every inch of the proof that he’s really, really hard right now. It startles a moan out of him, the sound ripped from his throat, and his eyes go so wide she can see white around the whole hazel iris, pupils black like the night outside. The tension comes rushing back into the room like a tide pulling in, swallowing them all whole, and everything goes still. Ashton’s just staring at her with those hazel eyes, tawny curls even more riotous than usual and mouth settling into a determined line. Luke’s holding his breath, Calum leaning forward, his head bowing over the two of them.

“Ash?” Mikey hazards, carefully shifting herself into a more comfortable position beneath his bulk. He doesn’t answer, for a moment. It’s like being held on the string of a cello, just waiting for the bow to drag across them and break this throbbing moment into tumbling notes.

“I know we said everything was going to go back to normal,” he blurts out finally, his voice shaky yet careful. “But I don’t think that it can.” And Mikey can’t help it, her face just- falls. It’s fucking disappointing and heartbreaking, because this is it. This is how it happens. They break it off with her and she has to find a way to shatter the binding and the Goddess is going to bring down the wrath of a thousand suns, and she’s going to lose them, and-

“Ash, you idiot, you’re making it sound like we’re breaking the binding or something-” Calum jumps in, his voice sharp as he slides his hand down to rest on her shoulder, pressing against them both. “He’s trying to say we don’t want things to be normal, we don’t want to keep pretending everything’s the same.”

“We’re partners, now,” Luke says quietly, his diaphragm expanding against her left arm, his cold fingers trailing down her hip. “And I don’t think we can fake this whole- this whole ‘just friends’ thing anymore.”

“You don’t want that-” Mikey tries to say, but Calum’s hand is remarkably effective at shutting her up.

“I think you’ll find we do,” Ashton says, leaning forward a little more. She can see the wildness in his eyes right now, some dancing spark that he only gets around the full moon times.

“Now who’s the idiot?” Calum says teasingly, his eyes squinting down at her, his smile broad and somehow lascivious.

“What d’you say?” Luke asks, leaning in further on the left, his face close enough that his cold breath fans across her face and Ashton’s neck, and Mikey-

Mikey has always been a fool for these boys. She’s always been falling for them, tripping after them, such an easy mark for their eyes and their smiles and their soft, soft hearts. So it only makes sense to just shove Calum’s hand off her mouth and reach forward and practically smash her mouth against Ashton’s. Luke makes the dorkiest little cheering noise, and Calum does that dark little laugh again, and Ashton- he just grabs her waist and pulls her up so close against him she thinks his heat might melt her. He kisses like he’s going to eat her alive, like he’s going to consume her whole. That sunshine zing is racing through her with a vengeance, tearing viciously at her self control until she’s putty in his hands. Which, sure, maybe it’s a little embarrassing that just one kiss is enough to put her in a daze, but in her defense, it’s a really fucking good kiss. He pulls back with his smiling mouth all wet and bruised up from hers, and she just kinda shudders, because, fuck. He looks like the wolf he is like this.

But then he’s pulling his arm up and sitting back, shifting her up into a sitting position in Luke’s lap so Calum can grasp her jaw so carefully and bend down towards her. He pauses, that fucking tease, just an inch away from her lips. Just watching her with his mischievous eyes, dancing little lights taunting her in the dark of the living room..

“Just kiss me already,” Mikey grits out, and Calum laughs all low and predatory.  

“Just savoring the moment,” he lilts out, and she practically growls at him. “Are you gonna be this impatient in bed all the time, Mikey? Gonna fight us? Gonna beg us for it? Gonna pull my hair when I eat you out? Gonna scratch up Lukey’s shoulders when he’s fucking you? Gonna-” She’s gonna kill him, is what she’s gonna do, if he keeps talking like that and making her knees weak and wobbly, so she hooks her elbow around his neck and drags him down, biting his full lower lip as hard as she can without breaking the skin and relishing in his smothered gasp. She can feel Ashton laughing against her shoulder until a cold hand snakes between them and it’s Luke’s turn to shove his hand down someone’s pants. Then, Ashton isn’t laughing so much as he is hiccuping his surprise and pressing his forehead into her shirt.

“I feel like we should move this to a bedroom,” Luke says, as conversationally as someone can with their hand down their best friend’s pants.

“Mikey’s bed,” Ashton grits out. “‘S the biggest.”

She’s not really paying attention to the conversation, but to be fair Calum is making an impressive series of bruises all around the huge bruise from Luke feeding from her the other day and she kind of can’t stop moaning long enough to give a fuck. So she’s a little surprised but not unhappy when Calum stands up, only breaking contact with her skin long enough to scoop her up against his front so they can make their way upstairs. They make it there more quickly than she anticipated, given that she currently can’t really think about moving anywhere on her own two feet. Calum tips her onto the bed when they get there, sliding up next to her with a satisfied smirk on his face. She’s flat on her back with Calum on his knees next to her, his hands grabbing towards Ashton who’s busy taking his pants off, when Luke crawls up the length of her body, all slinky and sly, to grin down at her.

“I think it’s my turn,” he says softly, smiling like it’s a secret, and god- she just. Loves them all a lot.

“I think it is,” she says, equally softly, reaching up to gently brush his hair away from his forehead where it’s fallen out of his quiff.

“You’re very pretty,” Luke murmurs as he leans down even further, nudging his nose against her cheekbone and kissing her on each cheek, the forehead, the tip of her nose. “Very, very lovely.” She can feel her cheeks getting hot, even though it’s ridiculous because they’ve literally just all confessed their huge boners and affection for one another, so she’s glad when he finally actually kisses her on the mouth, sucking soft and slow on her lower lip and giving her a distraction from his compliments.

It’s kind of perfect, laid up beneath her boys on her wonderfully large bed, with all of them buzzing to the brim with connected magic. She can feel the bruises throbbing on her skin from Calum’s mouth even as Luke’s cool lips drag along her jaw and down to press gently against the bruise he’d left the other morning. She’s impatient, desperate, but Luke’s not one to hurry unless he really wants to. He’s going so slowly, kissing his way across her collarbone as his long fingers ruck up the hem of her shirt at an even more glacial pace, but Calum and Ashton aren’t going slowly at all. Ashton’s already in Calum’s lap, braced up against the headboard next to her and Luke, grinding down on Calum’s dick through their boxers. Their mouths are slick and red, Calum’s cocky grin pressing against Ashton’s gasping mouth and his tongue fucking in without pause every time they meet. There’s a bite mark on his tan shoulder, canines a little deeper than the average, and Ashton’s thighs are trembling a little bit with eagerness.

It’s hot as fuck, honestly, making her wetter by the second. Luke finally gets her shirt up high enough that he wants to take it all the way off, coaxing her arms up gently so he can pull it over her head. Once it’s off he sets it to the side, and- she’s loving the way he looks at her all soft and lustful at the same time but right now she’s aching to get fucked like seven thousand different ways, so she braces her hands up against his chest and rolls them over with a quick motion that she’s a little surprised worked at all. He laughs at her, that pretty, delighted little chiming laugh he has when he’s amused by her, and Calum looks down at them before laughing too.

“You can get all ‘make love to me, baby’ some other night,” Mikey says, shoving her hand up Luke’s shirt to twist his nipple and relishing in the startled gasp and the faint flush that somehow manages to swim up on his cheeks as she does it. “I’ve got a week’s worth of Ash’s moon boners I need someone to fuck out of me.” Ash does a gaspy little giggle before he clambers off Calum’s legs, leaving the other boy to sprawl back against the headboard and palm himself lazily as he watches the three of them. Mikey can feel Ashton squirm his way up Luke’s legs until he’s right behind her, straddling Luke’s thighs and wrapping his arms around her stomach. His hands splay over her soft stomach, large enough to overlap, a hot press of skin that sends heat shuddering through her gut. Luke watches them appreciatively, his quiff all mussed up, his eyes gone all black when Ash kisses her shoulder with an open mouth. She can’t help grinding down a little on Luke’s dick when Ashton’s teeth graze the side of her neck, opposite the mass of bruises. It just feels so good, fuck- she might, maybe, like a little bit have a thing for marking.

It obviously feels good for Luke too because he moans helplessly, his fingers grasping at the sheets, his hips shifting up against hers. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm, rubbing down and back with Luke and Ashton grinding their hips forwards to meet her. She can feel how soaked her panties are, sticking to her skin and dragging deliciously over her clit. She can feel how the bond between them is swelling overwhelmingly, and it’s like being caught up in a hot, wet whirlpool, drowning in the mixing magic.

Calum’s shoved his boxers off at this point, stroking himself obviously and groaning under his breath when Luke slaps his hands over her hips, overlapping with Ashton’s a little bit and stilling her movements.

“I’m gonna come like this if you don’t stop,” he says breathlessly, which, well, wouldn’t be the biggest tragedy Mikey’s ever witnessed. But he obviously doesn’t want it that way, so she backs up a little and gets up on her knees, bracing herself back against Ashton.

“Someone ought to fuck Mikey,” Ashton murmurs against the nape of her neck, his teeth scraping deliciously and sending shivers down her spine. It’s a struggle not to just nod her head fervently enough to knock back against Ashton’s.

“Someone really ought to,” she says, hands grasping for her panties and shoving them down her thighs. The three of them laugh a little at her eagerness, but they’re quickly shut up when she slides her own hand down to rub at her clit, the sounds so wet and obvious in the spaces between them. “Multiple people, even, considering I’ve got enough charms on all this junk that we’ve got literally nothing to worry about.” She gestures down at her groin crudely, grinning at them all with a little wildness in her eyes. It’s, like, one of the first spells she learned when she became a teenager. Contraception, protection. Easy shit that’s never bad to know how to cast.

The boys obviously appreciate that preparedness, eager hands fumbling to remove the last bits of clothing left on each of them before Luke settles back up, his head tilted to press against Calum’s hip and his fingers beckoning her forwards. She swallows heavily, frozen for a half-second, because the nerves have finally caught up with her. She’s doing this. She’s really doing this, this thing she’s wanted since before she knew it was a thing. But before she can get too deep in her head, Ashton’s hand is resting warm at the small of her back, urging her forward. She straddles Luke again, meeting his sweet little smile and dangerous eyes with a grin of her own, bending forward to kiss him and mouth at his lip ring a little.

“Youngest first, huh?” she murmurs playfully, laughing when he smacks her hip gently and pulls her back until she can feel his cock rubbing up against her soaked pussy. It’s a little bit shocking how much cooler he is than a normal person, but it’s not unpleasant. His hands press against her hips firmly, his legs coming up a little so that she can rest back against them as she rears up, hand wrapping gently around his cock. It’s so- it’s surreal, and it’s a lot, the head slipping in easy, that long slow slide until she’s sitting flush against his skin, breathing heavy, her head tipped back and her eyes clenched shut.

“Fuck,” Luke chokes out after a long, tense moment, his hips jerking a little beneath her. It’s so good it almost hurts a little. “I gotta- fuck-”

“C’mon,” she murmurs, bending her head back down and opening her eyes once more. “Fuck me, Lukey.” He nearly growls up at her, his hands tightening and his hips fucking up into her. It’s so, so good, that long slick slide, the friction, and it only gets better as Ashton crowds up behind her again to slide his fingers over her clit. “Shit, shit- Ash, fucking-” He laughs breathily against her skin, slipping his fingers down for a brief second to feel where Luke’s fucking into her, dragging a moan from Luke’s open mouth.

He’s all fanged out, his eyes moonstone-glowy and eerie. It’s hot, to be honest, the way his control is slipping. She’ll probably have bruises on her hips. Calum’s stopped jerking himself off, sliding down the headboard until he’s lying beside Luke, curling towards him and pressing his mouth to Luke’s shoulder. His eyes are eerie too, swimming with golden Charm. This is the type of thing Calum feeds off of, and it’s very obvious in this moment that they’re inhabiting his realm now.

“You want to bite her, don’t you?” Calum needles, his voice low and dark and promising. Luke shudders- they all shudder, looking down at Calum. He’s so smug under their gazes, dragging his fingernails up Ashton’s thigh and relishing in his shiver. “You want to taste her as she comes on your cock, Lu, I know you do-”

“I do,” Luke practically sobs out, gritting his jaw and groaning desperately. “I wanna, Cal, I-”

“Ask her nicely,” Calum says, syrupy sweet, and Luke obeys immediately, turning pleading eyes up to her.

“Can I bite you, Mikey?” he asks, breathless and desperate and so, so pretty underneath her that it almost makes her come just hearing him beg.

“Do it,” she grits out, shoving her hair over her ear and bending down. For someone fucking her so deep, so hard, it’s surprisingly gentle when his mouth touches her shoulder and his fangs slide into her skin. The fire that comes with them, though, is anything but gentle. It wracks her body, sending her over the edge like a shove in the back, her orgasm punching the air from her lungs and her muscles locking up. She can feel Luke’s moans vibrating through her shoulder, hear Ashton and Calum groaning at the sight of the two of them locked together. It’s so fucking good, so deep and so all consuming, racing through her veins and making her muscles weak, and it seems like it goes on forever until Luke is pulling away and gasping into her mouth. He tastes like copper and her own witch-magic, intoxicating and wrong. She can feel his cum on her inner thighs and she’s trembling but she still wants so bad, just more wound up even after her orgasm.

“That was so hot,” Ashton says- she can barely manage to respond through her heaving breaths but Calum and Luke manage to do so with fervent yes’s reverberating through the room.

It takes a moment for her to clamber off of Luke’s lap, thighs feeling like they’ve been stretched awkwardly, his hands fumbling too much to really help her, and she manages to slide herself down between Calum and Luke until she’s resting back against some portion of mattress despite being partially on top of both of them. She stretches her hands over her head for a moment, just shaking out the last little trembles from her fingers before she makes grabby hands at Ashton. He laughs at her, but he’s obviously weak to her charms because he slides forward to hook her thighs over his legs where he sits between Calum and Luke. His hands are so big on her legs, making little red indents in the soft, pale skin. He slides one up, resting a thumb just below her belly button and rubbing gently, softly, as Luke turns on his side next to her and sort of spoons up around them.

“You gonna fuck me or not, Irwin?” she says challengingly when Ashton just sort of lingers there, rubbing circles into her skin with his ridiculously warm hands. He laughs and presses forward a little, his erection nudging up against her skin and leaving a little wet spot.

“You’re so fucking impatient,” he says, voice all fake stern, and she can’t help teasing him a little, moaning outrageously and wiggling her hips dramatically.

“Oh, Ashy, tell me how naughty I am,” Mikey purrs, barely able to keep a straight face. She loses it when Calum turns his face to bury a snorting giggle in the warm, smooth skin of her collarbone. Ashton’s not really laughing, though, as he bends forward and grasps the underside of her hip with the hand not resting on her stomach. She’s too busy laughing to realize that he’s lining up but her laugh gets cut off mid-breath when he thrusts in, one firm move of his hips, his hand on her stomach pressing down and creating a delicious ache in her groin. “Shit, Ashton,” she breathes, and he looks so fucking smug.

“It’s not nice to tease,” he murmurs, starting up a quick pace, practically slamming into her, his hand still pressing down, rubbing a little. It makes her feel so full, makes her muscles clench around him, drawing little pleased noises from his mouth. “I really will spank you, Mikey.” Luke makes the most involuntary, embarrassed groan at that, sucking in a breath and hiding his face in the pillow, pressed against her fanned out hair, and Calum laughs darkly.

“I think Luke’s the one who wants to get spanked,” he says, his lips rubbing up against Mikey’s skin and making her shiver. It’s hard to focus on anything other than Ashton fucking her- her whole body feels like it’s trembling, hips writhing up against a strong hand that doesn’t seem to want to move. There’s sweat on Ashton’s bare chest, dripping down, and she’s just so obscenely wet with her cum and Luke’s cum and the sound of it makes her cheeks go a little red. It feels like there’s a knot building up in her stomach, a rubber band about to snap. It’s almost overwhelming, scary a little, the heat rising through her body when Ashton angles his hips up a little to hit against some tender little spot, pressing down even harder on her stomach.

It’s absolutely delicious but it’s so out of control, her hands grasping for something, anything to hold onto because it feels like she’s going to be swept away. Calum grasps one, Luke the other, and just in time before the wave crashes over her shoulder and drags her under. She can hear Ashton’s animalistic moan and she can tell that she’s gasping brokenly, making whimpering little sounds, because it feels like she’s being torn in half by her orgasm. Everything is gushing so, so wet between her thighs and the room is so hazy, so blurry around her, like viewing everything through frosted glass. It kind of feels like she’s broken something inside her, every muscle pulled so tight, clamping down so hard around Ashton it feels like he’ll never be outside her again.

When she can finally breathe without her chest feeling like it’s being squeezed in a vice, Ashton is staring down at her in awe and his entire lower stomach along with her thighs are soaking wet, dripping slick. She makes a weak sound, wiggling as a cue for him to pull out, which he does, albeit reluctantly. It’s kind of gross, how squishy she feels right now.

“I kinda want to make you do that again and again,” he says, all breathless and limp, bending down to press a kiss against her belly button. Luke clearly concurs, his eyes wide and interested, and Calum’s fingers are already slipping along the curve of her hip as he hums his agreement. Her thighs flop kind of weakly down onto the bed when Ashton backs up, crawling his way up to Calum’s side, and she feels rather more like wobbly jelly than Mikey at this point.

“You up for one more?” Calum rasps gently, propping himself up on one hand to look down at her, undisguised lust heavy in his eyes. She takes a deep breath, nodding, her hand wobbling up to brush across his lower lip.

“Do your worst, Hood,” she teases him, grinning through kiss-bruised lips. He grins back, all lithe and lethal predator that he is in a bed, before sliding himself down the bed. His hands wrap around her thighs, gripping hard enough that he’s probably leaving little orchid bruises on them, and he props himself on his stomach to gaze at her.

“You’re beautiful,” he says simply, before he bends down to press a kiss to the inside of her thigh. It’s hard not to just grab his hair and pull him against her pussy, all those curly strands and little fluffy waves and just- right there, but she manages. There’s something uneasy resting in her stomach, a little unsettled at the way they seem to be lavishing this gentle adoration on her, but it’s swept back to the corner when Calum smirks his most devious smirk and uses his thumbs to spread her pussy open before diving in. Her back arches almost involuntarily before Luke and Ashton are spreading their hands over her hips and holding her down so she doesn’t buck against Calum’s face. He’s licking the taste of her and Luke and Ashton all mixed together out of her, licking it off her thighs, sucking her clit and moaning obscenely against it, sending trembles through her entire being. “You all taste so good together,” he groans out into the crease of her thigh where it meets her hip, his own hips rutting into the bed a few times helplessly.

He eats her out until she can’t help but put her hands in his hair, wiggling against his face and outright nearly shrieking when he dips down to fuck his tongue into her, a thumb rubbing her swollen, sensitive clit without mercy. And she’s almost going to come again, a third time, when he pulls back. She whines, whimpers, reaches out for him, but he’s shushing her with his mouth on hers as soon as he can stretch himself out on top of her. He’s right- they do taste good together, so she licks it out of Calum’s mouth until all she can taste is the sugar and spice of his magic, until all she can do is moan helplessly as he bites her lip and sucks it until it’s throbbing and fat and nearly purple. Her hips are riding up against his involuntarily when he finally slips into her, fucking her slow and deep, her clit bumping up against his abdomen just enough to get her there. It’s exhausting, the way he seems to take everything out of her. Exhausting enough that she almost wonders if it’s not his Charm twining around her magic, sucking the energy out of their bond.

But it’s hard to wonder when she’s shuddering and trembling and shaking like a leaf in the wind and coming in long, drawn out pulses that make her rake her nails down his back. He shivers in her arms when she comes, fucking into her a few more times with a little less finesse before giving himself over to it as well and burying his face in her neck. They don’t disengage for a few long minutes, her hands gone limp on his back and her eyes closed, their breathing slowing together.

She feels like she could probably sleep for a million years when he finally pulls back, Ashton slipping out of the bed to go grab a washcloth and gently clean off her inner thighs, drag softly between them so she doesn’t have to feel so slimy in the morning. Luke curls himself further around her, and Calum takes Ashton’s place, slinging an arm around her waist to brush his knuckles against Luke’s hip. When Ashton comes back again from throwing the washcloth in her hamper, he nudges up against Luke’s back and wraps his arm around his ribs until he can link fingers with her. It’s so nice, warm and lovely and soft and hazy. And their bond feels truly calm for the first time since the night of the binding, so it’s not hard to just slip off to sleep there, safe in each others’ arms. 


	4. rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything just seems better the morning after, and the full moon is on the rise.

Waking up surrounded by sweaty boys isn’t all that unfamiliar for Mikey, but the definitely naked dicks pressing up against her with morning insistence is pretty untrod territory. She manages to ignore them for a precious few more moments of sleep, settling a little deeper in the cradle of arms and the sleep-warm covers. But then Luke makes a peculiar gasping noise against her shoulder, wiggling his hips a little.

“I’m ignoring you,” Mikey mumbles grumpily, when the wiggling doesn’t stop. Ashton’s signature mischievous giggle sounds muffled when it hits her ears, and cracking one eye open reveals that it’s because he’s pressed his mouth up against Luke’s neck and is mouthing a great big bruise onto the pale skin. He’s got his hand wrapped around Luke’s cock under the covers, not even stroking, just holding it firmly- that’s why Luke’s wiggling, trying to get friction, his eyes blinking blearily and his cheeks a faint pink. It never ceases to amaze her that Luke has somehow managed to be the only vampire she knows that can even blush at all. “I can’t believe you’re letting debauchery interrupt sleep,” she grumbles, not really all that put out because Luke is really pretty all dream soft and desperately rocking his hips. Calum murmurs something on her other side, his mouth pressing hot against her shoulder, his hand creeping along her stomach to grasp her waist.

Not surprising that he’s woken- he’s got a radar for things like this, and his filthy smile says that he knows exactly what’s going on under the sheets on the other side of Mikey. She gives up on the idea of more sleep as Luke moans brokenly into her ear, his fingers pressing red marks on her side. There are bruises on her pale hips from hands the night before, and she can feel the bruises on her neck as well, arching back to wiggle into a more comfortable position. Calum drags his knee up, shoving the sheets off the four of them with little finesse so that they can all watch Ashton as he finally gives in to Luke’s wordless begging and begins to stroke him. Calum’s rutting lazily against her hip, rubbing his cheek against her skin absentmindedly. It’s not a hard decision to slide her own hand down to wrap around his erection, his little bitten off moan sending heat racing through her gut. She rubs her thumb slowly across the tip, stroking gently and turning her head for a brief second to brush a kiss across his ridiculously attractive cheekbone.

It’s nice, the four of them like this, slow morning handjobs in bed and Ashton rubbing off against Luke’s ass, three boys moaning and gasping curled around her. She wants to be grossed out and a little annoyed when Luke and Calum both manage to come all over her stomach, but it’s just enough hotter than gross when the both of them immediately rub their hands down to get her off with Luke’s cold fingers on her clit and Calum’s fucking into her (admittedly sore) cunt.

For a long, syrupy moment, after she comes, they just all breathe together, catching breath and melting back into the mattress.

“I like waking up like this,” Ashton says after a minute, and Luke rolls over to kiss him with an adorably shy smile. The rest of them agree. She can feel the moon tugging at their bond through Ashton, but it’s not as urgent as it has been, even though tonight’s the night of the full moon. The energy has been spent out a little bit, making it bearable to roll out of bed one after the other and tramp their way down to the kitchen for breakfast.

They’re all extra cuddly this morning, Luke curling his way around Calum’s back as the older boy makes scrambled eggs, his chin over Calum’s shoulder and his arms around his waist. Mikey sits on the counter and shamelessly pats Ashton’s ass every time he walks past her to get more bread to put in the toaster or more berries to wash in a bowl by the sink. She’s not really sure what this is, not really sure she can believe that she gets to have it, but she’s going to enjoy it while it lasts. When Ashton’s dished up the toast and berries and put the plates out for Calum to scoop eggs onto, she pulls him in with her ankles and drapes her arms over his shoulders, leaning in to kiss him slow and unhurried. He goes with it immediately, his hands resting on her hips and his mouth opening sweet beneath hers. It feels easy. It feels right.

“Carry me to the breakfast table,” she murmurs when he pulls back just slightly, Calum poking at his shoulder to let them know the eggs are ready.

“Have your legs stopped working?” he grins, bumping his forehead against hers, and she can’t help but slide her fingers into his mussed up curls, tugging them gently.

“No, I’m just lazy,” she laughs, and he’s Ashton so of course he just lets her scoot herself to the edge and picks her up, carrying her the eight feet to the breakfast table as Calum and Luke groan on about how they never get carried around.

“I’m lazy too,” Luke protests, but Ashton just snorts and Mikey sticks her tongue out at him from behind Ashton’s back as he sets her down in her seat.

“Maybe if you weren’t nine foot tall, I’d carry you around more,” Ashton says, settling in his own seat and digging into his breakfast. It’s just like a thousand breakfasts they’ve had together before, getting ready for a lazy Saturday at the shop, but it’s different all the same. It’s better. It’s easier. And it’s definitely more comfortable than the past week has been. It’s almost breathtaking, how fragile she feels when she thinks about the fact that this is all she’s wanted for so, so long. Doesn’t want to poke too hard at it, shatter it apart. Doesn’t want to look too closely, lest she scare it away. So Mikey relaxes back against her chair and just breathes it in.

She’s rather happy right now.

\--

The shop is uncharacteristically empty, even for a Saturday, so Mikey and Luke get down to the business of trying to organize the front inventory for the first time in far too long. They stack up loads of colored candles, putting them all back in their correct cubby holes on the far wall, and Luke does an admirable job of stopping a load of solid iron amulets from falling on her head. Calum always says they should really stop having those around, considering how dangerous they are for him in particular, but she never pays much attention to him when he’s whining about all the perilous things in their shop. They’ve organized the incense and restocked all the herb jars and they’re moving on to sorting through various dreamcatchers and sleep aids they’ve gotten from local dreamweavers when it occurs to Mikey that they haven’t heard a peep from Ashton and Calum in a worryingly long time.

It seems like the thought is also occurring to Luke at the same time as they both focus in on the tangled lines between them and see the completely suspicious golden twining of Calum winding around Ashton’s currently purple glow.

Luke rolls his eyes, standing up and making his way around the counter to push aside the totally chintzy beaded curtain that separates the back rooms from the front of the store.

“Is everything alri-” he starts to call out, before he goes dead silent, his eyebrows shooting up and his mouth making a surprised little o. He lets out a strangled little cough, teetering on his feet like he’s not sure whether to go through the doorway or spin on his heel. Which- intriguing, so Mikey gets up and sticks her head through the doorway, and yeah, ok, now she gets it. Ashton’s leaning up against the big desk where Luke keeps all the books and paperwork, biting his own wrist with moon-sharp teeth, his cheeks flushed bright cherry red and his other hand tangled in Calum’s hair. Calum’s on his knees, hands pressing Ashton’s hips back against the wood, and he’s looking remarkably smug for someone with a mouthful of cock. Like, not that one shouldn’t be smug about that, but there’s just a lot going on and it’s a little bit admirable that he even has the wherewithal to also look smug at the same time. He pulls off with a slick, obscene sound, and Ashton’s somehow become even redder as they’re staring at him. And it’s just-

“We’re at the shop,” Mikey says, voice a little disgusted. She’s usually pretty ok with debauchery really anywhere, it makes her laugh and it makes her smirk and it tickles the mischievous bones in her body but Calum’s Charm is leaking obviously everywhere, tendrils of golden syrupy magic practically dripping from him. “You’ve gotta stop leaking Charm everywhere when we’re at the shop, Calum, this is all your fault-”

“Hey,” Calum protests, his voice a little hoarse. “Ash is the one who can’t control his boner, I’m just helping him out here.”

“I couldn’t control my boner because you were rubbing Charm all over me,” Ash says, as crossly as one can with their spit-slick cock twitching up against their abs, interrupted mid-blowjob in the back room of their workplace.

“We know who’s the instigator,” Luke says, a little faintly, before making the decision that it’s better for all of them if he turns around and goes back to the register. Because the shop is still open and even though it’s currently empty, a customer could walk in at any time. Mikey gives Calum her best staredown, her deadliest glare, before huffing and turning back around. Given the terribly dirty sound she hears immediately after and Ash’s not-very-well-muffled moan, it doesn’t deter them at all. As well she knew it wouldn’t, Calum’s very hard to dissuade when he’s intent on getting something that he wants. It’s kind of tense in the front of the shop now that she and Luke both know exactly what’s happening (can practically FEEL what’s happening) but they manage to get the dreamcatchers and sleep aids all sorted out, minus one that she dropped when Calum make a filthy noise and Ash choked on his own breath far too loudly.

By the time Calum reappears to help them stock a huge crate of blackberry juice phials with the other tonics, he’s obnoxiously smug and there’s faint flickers of golden magic trailing down everything he touches. He wipes his mouth so obviously that it nearly makes her blush, wiggling his eyebrows at Luke until the other boy can’t help but laugh.

“You’re not cute,” Mikey says, and Calum pouts at her, rubbing his thumb across her jawline as he slips past her to grab another box of rosewood scraps for carving. “You’re going to daze someone out unexpectedly when they’re just trying to come in for bruise cream.” She can feel the Charm soaking into her skin just from his light touch, making her a little woozy, and she tries her best to grimace at him with as much disapproval as she can muster. It’s pretty hard, Calum’s Charm is quite intoxicating when he wants it to be. Today, considering his clearly mischievous mood, it feels like the welcome heat of a warm fireplace, like mulled apple cider and an urgent desire to be wearing far less clothing. It feels like touch-hunger, and a desperate want to feel the heat of the flames on bare skin, in the cradle of someone’s arms. Her disapproval flies out the window faster than she’s proud of, and she doesn’t even realize she’s swaying a little until Luke’s loud huff startles her out of it. Calum’s just watching her, eyes hungry and smirk wide, but Luke has crossed his arms as poutily as a toweringly tall, broad vampire can.

“I’m calling a stalemate,” he says sternly, straightening up to milk those few precious inches he has over Calum. “A truce, or something. We’ve got work to do, we need to go home and get things ready for tonight, and we can’t do that if you’re- if you’re drugging everyone, Calum.”

“I’m not drugging them,” Calum says, frowning exaggeratedly, his eyebrows pulling together. “You can’t stop me from being what I am.”

“What you are is out of control,” Ash yells, leaning his (extremely mussed) head out from the beaded curtain.

“You weren’t complaining when I was sucking your dick!” Calum protests, crossing his own arms in a mirror of Luke’s position now.

“Okay, okay, I don’t care about what’s been going on, I don’t care, we need to get this all done,” Luke says, his tone as final as he can make it with Calum’s pouting, frowning face peering up at him. “We’ve got a moon run to get ready for.” He fidgets a little as Calum intensifies his pout, but he doesn’t seem to be backing down, so Calum sulks off to the back room with his box of rosewood. As soon as he’s through the curtain, Luke exhales heavily, leaning back against the shelf and unfolding his arms.

“I don’t like being responsible,” he whines, sticking out his bottom lip at her, his lip ring gleaming in the low light. Mikey laughs, reaching up to pat his cheek gently, before shaking her head to loosen the last of the Charm and turn back to her stocking.

“None of us do, Lukey.”

\--

Somehow, they manage to make it home without Calum getting any more of them to take their pants off. Ashton’s a little jittery, fussing around everyone, trying to make sure they’re all okay with coming out for the run. In between reassuring him that they’re really more than okay with taking their boyfriend out to get naked in the woods, Luke shoves snacks his direction, because Ashton’s also getting hungrier and hungrier the closer sunset gets.

The full moon takes massive amounts of energy out of a werewolf, far more so than a normal shift. It’s the strongest change of the month. Ashton always gets ravenously hungry on the day of the shift, so they keep extra snacks for him in a cupboard above the fridge. Only Luke is tall enough to comfortably reach it- it always falls to him to be the one to get them down for Ashton. He takes to the job well enough, a sweet little smile tugging at his mouth when Ashton accepts all the snacks gratefully, beaming up at him. Mikey’s thinking about packing a picnic, but she’s also feeling pretty happy where she is sitting on the counter, watching Ashton devour a package of beef jerky. Luckily, Luke solves the problem for them by deciding that Calum is going to go get them all sandwiches, and he’s going to throw some other things in a cooler.

It’s kind of nice to just sit there, amongst the bustle of the boys bantering with each other, Calum calling up the sandwich shop so their order will be ready, Luke telling Ashton that he has to wait to eat the cookies until later but he can have another packet of fruit snacks if he wants them. They’ve been building tension all week, dancing around one another, crashing together and falling into this mad tornado of emotions and sex. And the storm has calmed around them, a tempest slowly dying out after they’d finally given in to the energy last night. Obviously the tension isn’t just gone, but now the moon-jitters feel almost pleasant as opposed to stifling. They aren’t trying to break the gravitational pull of their binding anymore, instead relaxing into it, finding comfortable orbits around one another. No one tenses up or pulls away when Calum brushes his faintly glowing fingertips over their shoulder or their knee as he passes them. Luke doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that Mikey has patted his ass six out of seven times he’s passed her perch on the counter. Ashton’s not broadcasting his shame about all the emotions they can feel coming from his end of the bond.

Mikey supposes it’s pretty comfortable to have a relationship where you aren’t all pretending you don’t want to fuck while covering up boners 24/7. Denial’s a terrible thing for a relationship.

And she’s getting excited about the moon-run too, because it’s not often, or really ever that she can even remember, that Ashton’s been around them for one. He goes off on his own every month, often returning for a day or two to his mother’s house to be with his family and their pack. She knows it’s awkward for him sometimes, because while they used to be his pack too, living with her and the other two boys for so long and sharing all that they shared with each other even before the bond means that to Ashton’s wolf, they’re his pack now. Sure, none of them are wolves, but his wolf can sense their magic and it latched on pretty firmly quite some time ago. But they’d never even considered going out to the woods with him, because Ashton had always been pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, basically used it as an excuse to see his siblings.

Now, though, it’s almost like they can’t help going with him. And it would feel wrong, to be so far away from him when he Changed. They’ll just have to find another reason to go visit his siblings and his mom. Which, come to think of it, might be a good idea for more reasons than that. They still haven’t really told their parents about this, although Mikey gets the idea her mom will simply be delighted that her daughter is powerful enough to warrant a nudge from the Goddess herself. She has no clue how the other parents will react, really. It’s one thing for your child to start off on a business venture with their three best childhood friends, and quite another for them to come home for all intents and purposes married to them.

“What are we going to tell our parents?” she finally asks out loud, raising her head to look at the three of them. Calum is putting on his shoes to go get the sandwiches, Luke is arranging beers in the cooler, and Ashton is bouncing on the balls of his feet, animatedly discussing something or another with the two of them. They all stop still when she speaks, though, swinging their heads in somewhat eerie unison to look at her.

“I hadn’t honestly thought of that,” Calum admits, setting his foot down without finishing tying the laces of his shoe. “But we’ve got to tell them, right?”

“My mom already knows,” Luke says, shrugging and dipping his head a little, an embarrassed smile creeping across his face. “I kinda told her, like, as soon as it happened.” It isn’t all that surprising that Luke would do that, so Mikey isn’t shocked or anything.

“Such a mama’s boy, Hemmings,” Ashton teases, reaching over to punch Luke’s shoulder gently. Luke scowls at him, but not for long- he knows it’s true. “We probably should tell them,” he says after a long moment of looking at Luke fondly. “They are our parents.”

“Responsibilities,” Calum groans, dropping down to tie his shoe and then straightening up. “I’m bringing you all with me when we go, then, because I don’t want to explain this alone.”

“Family road trip?” Luke suggests, shutting the cooler and hefting it up onto the countertop.

“We might as well,” Mikey says, leaning back against the cabinets. It’s been a while since they’ve all been back home together, and it might be good. Good for a lot of reasons, seeing their families and maybe some of their old friends, getting the chance to show her cousin that she wasn’t a fool for wishing for more than one spellmate. Maybe lording it over a few of their old classmates that she’s got three spellmates and personal visits from the Goddess.

It might be nice.

It will be nice, she thinks.

She’s not sure if that’s just because it’ll be an adventure with her boys, or if it’s because she really likes the idea of going back home, but either way, she’ll happily do it.

\--

The sun sets so slowly it almost feels like it’s mocking them as they trek through the woods on a broad, gravelly path that had, luckily, come with their property. It leads a winding trail from the clearing of their back yard down to another clearing, this one bigger. It’s a near perfect circle, an eerie and unnatural roundness to the way the trees have arranged themselves. There are always wildflowers blooming here, even in the dead of winter. This is a big part of why they bought the property in the first place. It’s a place that hums with power, the kind Mikey can feel licking at her fingertips like playful flames or budding lightning.

She’d been fairly wary of it at first, but a week after they’d moved in, the four of them had come down here and burnt so much sage it made the air hazy, Mikey and Calum digging their fingers into the earth and reaching out to the energy here. It’s a crossover point, where the ley lines that span the planet cross over each other and form a conduit of energy, feeding the earth around it. They wax and wane as the forest around them does, linked into the earth and fed by it even as it feeds back. An endless cycle. It had accepted them the first night they’d burnt the sage here, luckily, and now it welcomes them back to their spot sitting in the very center of it. They lay the blanket Ashton has brought down, a vast plaid thing Mikey had found at a consignment shop. Luke drops the cooler, settling down to sit cross-legged on one corner, and like every time before, each of them settle in the other three corners. Calum drops the sandwiches in the very middle.

They have picnics here not infrequently, so it’s comfortable and routine to pull her sandwich out, tapping her fingers on her knees and watching the other three eat. Luke’s even gone all out for the occasion and decided to actually eat, which he pretty rarely does, given that he doesn’t really need to. Ashton finishes his sandwich in a matter of minutes, far faster than the rest of them, and he’s just jiggling his leg, snapping his fingers, crawling out of his own skin with excitement until Mikey reaches over to pull him down next to her. He curls so sweetly around her knee, resting his cheek on her thigh and letting her card her fingers through his curls. It calms him, somewhat, at least until the rest of them can finish eating.

When the last of them (Calum) has put down the napkin, finally finished wiping his face, Ashton springs upwards again, raising his arms and turning his face towards the horizon. The moon hasn’t risen fully over the treetops yet, the lavender dusk just finally settling into indigo twilight, but it’s risen enough that they can all feel it’s impact on Ashton. She leans back on her hands to watch as he strips off his vest top, sliding his shoes off and kicking them to the side. He’s utterly unselfconscious in the moment, shoving his pants down around his ankles to step out of them, leaving him in only his briefs. It’s only when he turns back to them that he flushes, seeing that they’re all watching him.

“Go on,” Calum says, his voice low and teasing. “Don’t stop the show now, Ash.”

“I’m not a strip show,” Ashton protests weakly, but he hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his underwear and shoves them down too, standing backlit by the moon glow in front of them all. He gathers the clothing, setting it all down on the blanket, before stepping back. “You’re going to run with me, right?” he asks, one last time, and sure, maybe Mikey hasn’t really run since highschool PE, but that’s ok. Calum will slow down for her, probably.

“Of course,” Luke replies for the three of them. Ashton steps back again, satisfied, and closes his eyes, turning from them. It’s pretty glorious to see his naked back like that, underneath the night sky. The moon is getting steadily higher as she watches him raise his arms up, basking in its glow before dropping to his knees. She’s seen him change quite a few times, but it somehow seems so much more primal like this, out in the middle of the woods. It’s not quite pleasant to feel the change in his magic, all of them registering a nasty tug on the center of their being, their stomachs dropping like the top of the hill on a roller coaster. But it’s so wonderful to watch him morph, a beautiful man into a beautiful wolf, his golden-brown coat gleaming and his luminescent eyes giving Luke a run for his money.

Mikey can tell that he’s almost laughing inside, giddy with the joy of being Changed under the full moon as he prances in a circle around them, bowing his head down to knock gently against her cheek and lick it far more delicately than usual. He’s so massive that when she stands, he comes up nearly to her shoulder, and it would have scared her once upon a time but this is Ashton and she finds herself not terrified at all of the giant wolf beside her.

“Well, boys,” she says, tossing her empty bottle back on the blanket and throwing off her jacket. “We’ve a moon to run under.”

Ashton’s triumphant howl nearly sends shivers through the forest itself, and Mikey can feel the magic spiking all around them as the ley lines react.

It’s absolutely glorious.


	5. silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They run, they run, and they fall, together.

The branches whip against their faces none-too-gently, but none of them really mind.

It just feels so right to scramble over logs together, Ashton more graceful about it than the rest of them. The woods here are wild and welcoming, they’re beautiful in their chaos. Mikey can feel the energy surrounding them, a beautiful storm brewing in her bones. She’s not really one for exercise, honestly- she never liked gym class, and she’s never like being out of breath unless it’s from a good orgasm. But the moon feels like home on her skin, the way Calum’s grinning at her in flashes between the tree branch shadows feels like sugar on her tongue.

Ashton howls again, reverberating through them all, circling them in his hyperactive, bouncy way, and Luke laughs, reaching out his hands to card through Ashton’s shaggy coat. Her lungs have that sharp sensation, tingles from gasping too much chilly air, but it goes away the moment she looks into Ashton’s eyes.

This is what he wanted- when he’d been lying in her bed a couple of nights ago, telling her about his dream that they had Changed together and run free through the woods. His magic had been tugging on them all, but hardest on his instincts, his need for Pack togetherness. The ingrained desire to have his lovers underneath the full moon, backlit by the Mother of his kind, as close to his spirit as they could possibly be. Just like Luke needed their blood, just like Calum needed their energy, just like Mikey needed their magic. They were more whole, here, with Ashton in his truest form, at his strongest, than they had been since the night of the binding. And perhaps that was in part because even as Mikey could feel their own innate magic growing closer and closer together, she could also feel the land reaching out to them through the ley lines beneath their feet.

There were always old legends about the ley lines, the places they connected- that was part of the reason why the four of them had felt so drawn here in the first place. And Mikey had snickered in the back of the classroom at all the stories about lovers becoming one over connecting points and recharging the very fabric of reality with their climactic energy. It had always seemed so dramatic, so ancient Greece and vengeful gods. Here, with Calum’s fingers reaching out to trail across her elbow, with Luke’s eyes flashing eerily and Ashton’s nose poking at her thigh, it seemed believable. Like the power, the contentment swelling between them could be something more.

Ashton’s teeth tug at Luke’s pants, nipping around his ankles, and Luke’s laughter rings out through the gathering winds whistling through the trees. The leaves are shuddering, shaking, rustling above them and the grasses bend sideways when Calum whoops loudly and vaults himself over a fallen tree. They’re not really sprinting, anymore, but circling back lazily, jogging in looping curlicues through the forest. Mikey’s glad, really, because as much as she loves them all she’s not really preternaturally fast like the rest of them are. Being a witch has a lot of perks, but super speed or strength isn’t one of them. Just like she suspected, Calum is the one to slow down for her, his fingers tangling with hers and dragging her along in Luke and Ashton’s path.

It’s almost funny to watch the other two ahead of them, in the glimpses they can catch through bark and branch and moss. Like a caricature of a boy and his dog, although Mikey immediately stifles that because ew, no, thinking too far into that would just get wrong. They wrestle carelessly, almost too fast for her eyes to catch. Tug of war and tangled together, bouncing off each other, sprinting like rivers that cross and tumble into one another across the land. Luke is usually pretty careful with his strength, generally the strongest out of all of them although he doesn’t really look it when he’s hunching his shoulders and chewing on his bottom lip bashfully. Now, though, he’s tossing Ashton around the same way Ashton is slamming into him, giddy yelps and giggles echoing through the night.

She’s distracted by everything that’s going on, too distracted to notice the way Calum’s edging more into her space with every step as they jog through the trees until he’s scooping her up with a ringing laugh, delighting in her startled shriek.

“You fucker,” she gasps, yanking a little on his hair, unable to stop herself from laughing at his overjoyed face, his mischievous grin. She can forgive him his transgression, treating her like a ragdoll pocket Mikey, because she can see the way the moon feels like bubbles underneath Calum’s skin.

That’s how they spend a good forty five minutes, just Calum carrying her through the woods, jostling her joyfully, Luke and Ashton blazing the trail ahead of them. By the time Luke and Ashton slow down enough for Calum to catch up to them, Luke is faintly flushed (as flushed as a blood-borrower can be), and Ashton’s got leaves stuck in his fur. They’re wrestling on the ground in a clearing, not the one they left their things in but another one, probably a good couple miles away from the house. The moon is so strong here it almost seems like silver sunshine, everything looking sharper than normal for nighttime. Luke laughs, high pitched and reckless, Ashton’s teeth snapping playfully and his tongue licking broad swipes across Luke’s ridiculous cheekbones.

“Gross, gross, gross-” Luke chants, but Ashton just yips and nuzzles at his throat, hopping gracefully off the vampire’s sprawled form to dance over to Calum and Mikey. They can’t really communicate, not with words, not when Ashton is like this. Well, they could but it would be one sided. There’s not really any clear mind reading abilities that go along with their bond, nor do any come with lycanthropy or the Change. But somehow, Mikey can still feel Ashton’s question, especially when his cold nose hits the bare patch between her shirt and her jeans and she yelps loudly, trying to squirm further up Calum’s chest. Let her down, let her down, Ash seems to be saying. Why is she so far up there where I can’t get to her, he’s projecting, with his luminous eyes so wide and his nose now nudging insistently at Calum’s hand where it supports her.

Calum just laughs at him, setting Mikey down as gently as he can, tsking and muttering something about jealous puppies. She doesn’t catch it at all, because Ashton is bowling her over before Calum’s hands have even fully left her skin. She’s lucky, falling into grass that feels softer than it looks, but even so Mikey’s a little winded by the impact of the giant wolf standing over her, the very tip of his nose touching hers. He just stares at her for a long, breathless moment, before he’s nuzzling into the crook of her neck too, just the way he did with Luke. He’s so warm, smelling like pine and wild magic, blood set free and running on home lands, wicked and untamed summer spurring through her veins. It should feel suffocating, but instead she just feels peaceful, reaching her hands up to bury her fingers in the veritable mane of his shaggy coat.

He settles himself down on her, resting curled up on top of her, his paws taking at least some of the weight so she isn’t crushed by his massive bulk, and for a long moment they are puzzle pieces fitting so perfectly there on the forest floor. Luke crawls his way over to them too, draping himself partially atop Ashton, resting his chin on the back of Ash’s neck. Calum settles down on the other side, his hand joining Mikey’s in Ash’s fur, and they fall into a long and syrupy calm there in the brilliant light of the full moon. She loses time, staring at the stars, a metronome of Ashton’s breaths flowing like the tide over her collarbone, and she is lost among the galaxies above them for who knows how long.

It must be an hour- maybe more, before the fog that’s stolen over them abates and the three of them still looking humanoid can feel the magic changing within Ashton’s part of the bond. It’s indescribable, but somehow they know- they know he’s coming back to them. Changing back isn’t as painful or wrong feeling as the first Change was, but it’s still unsettling, made potentially even more so by the fact that Ashton doesn’t bother to get the hell off of Mikey before he slips back into his human form. This time, though, something is familiar about the way the magic tugs at them, so Mikey can just lay still and wait for the overwhelmingly naked boy on top of her to shake the last of the Change shudders from his limbs. One of her hands is still in his hair when he blinks his eyes open lazily, happily, and she tugs his curls just a little, smiling up at him.

“Did it feel right?” Mikey asks, softly and secretly, just a breath in the scant inches between their mouths.

“More than it ever has,” Ashton murmurs, bending down to kiss her gently, to rub his nose against hers the way he had when he was all wolfed out and massive, when he had tackled her down into this shallow spot. Luke hums, his cheek still pressed to Ashton’s shoulder blade, and Calum hums back at him lazily, finally looking back down at the three of them, tearing his gaze away from the stars.

There’s something buzzing in the ground beneath them, something growing, like a rumble underneath her skin. She can feel it when Ashton presses another kiss to her jaw, when Calum’s gentle stroke of fingers turns into blunt nails scraping down Ashton’s back. He shivers on top of her, wriggling, slinging his legs over hers so he can sit straight up. Luke makes a disgruntled noise as he’s shunted off his perch, but it’s clear he understands what’s happening by the time he’s managed to right himself.

It’s like that hurricane in her stomach that swept them all away last night, the desperate tightening of their bond until they’re all dragged together helplessly, drowning in feeling and lust.

But it’s coming from the earth, from the forest, from the sky. It’s coming like a hum on the winds, like strings pulled taught, like an earthquake waiting to happen. When the moon seems to brighten even further, putting stars in Mikey’s eyes, she finally understands. The forest is asking them something, reaching out to them, wrapping its arms around them like a welcome home. It wants for them like it wants for water, for sunshine, for air. It wants for them like it wants for winter, for spring, for fires to sweep through and make it new again.

It wants for their magic, but it wants gently, open arms asking them to share. It’s not like the fae circle, not grasping, not taking. It’s just asking, asking if the four of them might let it join them for tonight.

And Mikey wants to say yes, thinks back to her classes, her naive snickers, before she ever thought she’d even have lovers or spellmates. She thinks back to the ancient times when Dionysus held his revels to recharge the earth, to say thank you, for any witch or fae knows that without the earth they would be anchorless satellites set adrift. It blows her goddamned mind to think that now it’s her, the earth is asking her for this, really still just some kid with a foolish heart and a desperate desire and better luck than she deserves.

She reaches up again and drags Ashton back down, kisses him fierce and quick, biting his lip like the fire has set back up in her again, like the moon is filling her bones with mercury. He falls into her so easily, strong arms bracing him, biting her back. Calum knows, Mikey can tell, he feels it too- he’s fae, after all, and the two of them are more bound to the earth than their lovers ever will be. They will always be the anchors, their feet firmly rooted on the ley lines of the earth, while their lovers are more ruled by the cosmos and the changing of gravity. He says yes too, with the way he reached over Ashton to pull Luke into his mouth, to smear golden dripping ichor magic down his fangs and mutter sweet things to the vampire boy.

They all say _yes, yes, yes, yes,_ there on the forest floor, the earth becoming softer for them, the branches growing over them. Like vines growing through garden walls, they are tangled in one another so hopelessly Mikey can’t possibly tell where she ends and any of them begin. And by the time she’s coming, gasping, screaming, breaking underneath them, exploding outward like a star gone supernova, she can’t tell where they all end and the forest begins either. The earth is humming, thrumming, buzzing, shaking beneath her fingertips, her weak head falling backwards until all she can see are the stars again. She’s certain she just saw new constellations behind her eyelids kissing Ashton-Calum-Luke. She’s certain she just saw two moons in the sky above them.

In the morning, Mikey will probably laugh about the fact that they just had sex on the forest floor. It’s something she’s always joked about with Ashton, ever since she heard a terrible embarrassing story about him finding his mother in a compromising position on the full moon during a Pack run. She’ll maybe be picking leaves and twigs and flower petals from her riotous mess of brightly colored hair for days, and she’s certain her back has been scratched the bits by whatever’s beneath her. Calum looks as dazed out as she feels, when she can finally tell the difference between all their limbs and their eyes and their lips. Luke’s face isn’t visible at all, buried in the crook between Ashton’s thigh and hip, and Ashton’s eyes are glimmering faintly, his cheeks flushed grenadine red. Beneath them the ley lines say _thank you, thank you, thank you_ , and she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, tells them _you’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome_.

She doesn’t know how long it is before Calum is coaxing her up, pressing kisses to her cheeks, her jaw, the tip of her nose, her shoulder blades. He pulls her to her feet and smiles at her like the sun itself, Luke crowding up behind her and Ashton shaking his fingers out in preparation to change again. This time it feels like water flowing through them all and they sigh in relief when he’s finally standing beside them in his wolf form, grinning predatory and pleased.

She thinks she falls asleep before they get back to the clearing- they must decide to let her rest, the most human out of all of them, because she wakes up at six AM in her own bed, with boys curled around her breathing slow and deep and peaceful. There are disconcerting silvery lines spread like frost along her window pane, the taste of wildness on her tongue, and a huge, somehow raucously arranged bouquet of white heather on the sill. White heather doesn’t grow anywhere near here, nor is this the time to find it, but somehow she knows. She knows who it’s from. It’s a symbol of protection, a clear display of thanks, left covered in fae magic that, even though it smells of danger, is obviously meant to be danger to any threat towards the four of them, and not the spellmates themselves.

And now Mikey knows, she knows what they’ve done for the land, and what the land will do for them in return. So she lets her eyes slip shut, lets her lips press gently to the jaw of the boy resting next to her, lets her breathing even out as she joins them in slumber.

For now, the restlessness and discord inside of them has burned out, and they are safe.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! This is the last chapter of this particular installment. It was super fun to write this and I'm totally into writing more, but it takes me forever because I'm a nursing student and I'm really busy. 
> 
> Not sure when another multi-chapter installment of this series will come up, but if you have any prompts or timestamps or blurbs or literally anything you want to request of me from this (or any 5sos thing at all, really) feel free to stop by my tumblr @ hivesongs.tumblr.com and talk to me!! 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who read and commented and bookmarked, you're all lovely and kind and beautiful peaches and I'm so grateful for you all.


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